


through the looking glass

by Shamera



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Paradox Ending: Test Subjects, early warning for typos, warning: tendency to not edit works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1602014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamera/pseuds/Shamera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirteen 'what if' situations where just one change may or may not cause a cascade of events. May not follow all the #ff13week prompts. Finishing it all off: Lightning, Hope, and a promise to be kept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1: Family

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly for #FF13week, but also largely for my own amusement and what I wanted to see from the games.

"You won’t need to move." Hope assured Sazh quietly, sitting knee to knee with the older man even as he tried desperately to come up with an adequate solution. "There’s an Academy research facility not far from here, and they’ll get you whatever you need. You can stay right here for as long as you need… as long as it takes to help Dajh get better."  
  
Sazh didn’t respond, as immersed in his grief as he was, but there was the slightest nod of his head in response to the words. Hope’s eyes darted to where the little boy was lying on the makeshift bed; pale and silent, completely unnatural from the child he had grown to know after the fall of Cocoon. It was unfair to Sazh, he knew, that the father kept getting his son taken away by fate. Once by fal’Cie, second by time, and now… They didn’t know what the cause was. Only that the child lay comatose and there was no explanation.  
  
"We’re not going to give up." Hope continued, voice low with determination. "We’ll get everyone to help. You’re not going to lose him, Sazh."  
  
The older man shook his head as if attempting to shake off his stupor, but never raised his eyes from his son. “He’s just… too small for this. Why does this always fall upon him, huh? What’s he done wrong? He’s just a little boy…”  
  
Hope reached out slowly to place a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder, and then tensed briefly as Sazh gave a full-body sigh and then slung an arm around his shoulders to pull him into an embrace, clearing remembering a time when Hope was still small enough his head wouldn’t have hit anyone’s chin and when he constantly needed comfort and reassurance.  
  
It was okay, Hope thought even as he patted Sazh on the back awkwardly, now tall enough that his chin was actually resting on the man’s shoulder. Sazh was a father first and foremost, and if it made him feel better…  
  
"What’s a man to do if he can’t keep his kid safe?” Sazh drawled out. Hope stayed silent, knowing that this was a conversation he couldn’t contribute in. The older man would have to find that strength and answer within himself without anyone’s help. And true to form, the pilot gave a heavy sigh before letting go of Hope. “I won’t give up. Not till Dajh wakes up. Not till he grows up with all those good memories a boy should have. Hell, not even then."  
  
Yes. A father first and foremost. Hope smiled.  
  
"We’ll all help. No one's giving up."

  
—

  
Hundreds of years later and still no one had the slightest clue as to why Dajh continued to sleep on. Hope disappeared, communications faltered between areas of Nova Chrysalia, and Sazh looked on as the weight of despair and disappointment and grief grew. The more residents of the Research Camp came to reassure him or to check on the monitoring equipment that had been set up for Dajh, the more Sazh gnashed his teeth and shifted from optimistic to angry.  
  
Hundreds of years later and then one day a little girl with pink hair looking disturbingly like a younger version of another girl he used to know (and wasn’t that a real fix. He had never known Serah as well as he would have liked, but the amount of stories Snow liked to regale about his gal meant Sazh had never been able to forget her: her kindness and her bravery and eventually her death atop his ship) came to sit with him.  
  
She offered him a box — “a coffer”, she said — looked more like a treasure chest most little kids would keep their knickknacks in.  
  
She told him what no one else had been able to discover: that Dajh’s soul was in pieces all over Nova Chrysalia, and that the box she gave him would be able to connect the pieces together if he found all of them.  
  
The girl who looked like Serah (“Lumina!” she corrected him cheerfully, swinging her legs from where she sat upon the top of a bookshelf… and just how strange were kids nowadays to pick places like that to rest?) disappeared soon after that, blowing in and out with the evening wind.  
  
That day, Sazh picked up an old and rusted phone which had been installed near five hundred years ago, and with a painful twinge of turmoiled emotions within his chest, dialed a few very familiar numbers.

  
—

  
“What — what the hell, chocobo?” Sazh gave a yelp as the little yellow chick circled his head relentlessly and nipped at his ears. He had his arms up to defend against the small creature, but that didn’t seem to deter the loyal bird. “Hey, calm down! I know you don’t want me leaving Dajh here, but we’ve got a job to do! Can’t find those shards if we stay here!”  
  
The chocobo chick gave a piercing cry and then nipped him on the ear once more, this time much harder than all the previous nips, and flew just out of reach as Sazh shouted in pain. And few more chirps and energetic flying and the pilot wished he had Vanille’s ability to communicate with animals.  
  
She would have known what the daft bird was trying to say, he thought fondly.  
  
In his moment of recollection, the bird circled back to his head once again, this time ramming itself against his hair until Sazh stumbled forward. “Ow! Ow! Okay — okay, what is it? You want me to go? You want me to stay? Make up your mind!”  
  
The continued dive bombs against his head had Sazh running toward the door, opening it and escaping as the chocobo chick squawked after him, directing him toward the treasure ball he kept nearby, just in case of emergencies.  
  
“Hey, stop!” Sazh protested as the chick continued to peck at him until he was nearly backed up into the floating ball. “What do you want? Treats? I don’t keep treats in this thing, you know!”  
  
The chick sounded disappointed as it chirped at him, and then flew over to land on the gently hovering ball.  
  
“What, you want me to prove it to you?” Sazh asked, exasperated. What was with the bird today? He couldn’t remember the last time the normally sweet and docile chocobo chick acted up like this. “Alright. I’ll show you. I haven’t even kept anything in this for —”  
  
He pressed a hand lightly before the ball in a signal for it to open, only to have his breath caught as he saw a glittering light that shouldn’t have been there.  
  
“Is this—?” He breathed out, fingers hesitating inches above the item. Was this a fragment of Dajh’s soul? Had it been this close all along, and he just hadn’t seen it?  
  
The chocobo chick chirped happily, dancing up and down in the air.

  
—

  
“No calls, no notes, no signs that you might still even be alive — and you think I won’t be mad?” Sazh thundered over the phone, pacing with agitation outside the small plane crash shelter that he called home. He made sure Dajh was still sleeping undisturbed with a glance through the window before nodding in reassurance and then facing the other way to continue, “You better have a good explanation, so help me —”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Noel Kreiss lamented from the other side of the line, sounding young and cowed. “I didn’t think —”  
  
“Damn right you didn’t think!” Sazh hollered back. “What, you don’t think I’d be worried? You don’t think I’d want to know you were still alive instead of dead in a ditch somewhere? How’s someone to know if you get yourself killed in the Chaos somewhere, or —” He waved his free arm about in an attempt to shake off his agitation, despite knowing that the young man wouldn’t be able to see it. “Or if you just up and disappear like Hope!”  
  
That brought about a tense silence, and Sazh sighed audibly before pressing a hand to his forehead, willing his anger to cool. That wasn’t fair of him. Shouldn’t have said that, especially since he knew damn well the all of them had searched frantically well over a century after Hope’s disappearance. Still no answers, no hints on where the kid might have gone.  
  
But then again, it had taken centuries before he had the slightest clue as to what could be done for Dajh. Maybe they all just needed to be more patient in this unending world.  
  
More patience, huh. He was too damned old for this.  
  
Maybe he had gotten used to the three hundred years full of regular visits from Snow, Hope, and Noel. Hope had arranged it so that they would all stay connected, would all endeavor to meet annually. Sure, in the beginning it had been once a week; almost a progress report of what was happening (and damn if that kid wasn’t efficient). As time went on, the week stretched into months into once a year.  
  
And now…  
  
“Over fifty years since I last heard word from you.” Sazh griped, voice now at a normal volume. “You better be calling to say you just woke up from a coma and the first thing you thought of was to inform me you’re still alive.”  
  
Again, silence over the line. Still, Sazh had enough experience with the kid to practically hear the guilt.  
  
All these centuries later, and…  
  
 _Kids,_ Sazh thought with exasperation. _The lot of them._  
  
“I…” and Noel faltered again, that one word sounding penitent. “…Sorry.”  
  
“Yeah, you better be.” Sazh said, but the steam was gone from his words. Now, he was more relieved than anything else. Of course he had checked with Snow to see if the youngest left of them was still alive, but it didn’t make him feel any better to be informed of the existence of the _Shadow Hunter._ Crazy kids. He ought to ground their asses. “So what? You finally remember this old man existed?”  
  
His anger completely vanished, however, once Noel informed him (in careful and halting words just in case Sazh decided to yell at him again) of a seed hunter in Luxerion who had traded him something very interesting for a bag full of soul seeds he collected plus something he had gotten off Mog near five hundred years ago.  
  
Well, Noel managed to tell him that _after_ Sazh yelled at him again, this time for a near half hour, about being in the Chaos long enough and fighting enough of the distorted creatures to procure a _bag of soul seeds_.  
  
Three days later, an apprehensive Noel showed up in the northern Wildlands to hand over a shining fragment, and the two of them watched with racing hearts as Sazh very carefully stored it in the coffer.  
  
Noel stayed for several more days after that, grounded from going back to Luxerion.

  
—

  
“I’ve got some good news.” Were the first words Snow said when Sazh picked up the phone that day. Eight months of dead ends, of wandering from sunrise to sundown in the wildlands hoping to find a single clue as to where he might find the next fragment of Dajh’s soul, and nothing.  
  
Zero, zip, zilch.  
  
He almost didn’t have the energy to deal with Snow’s unexpected cheer. Not that it wasn’t good to hear a positive note in the hero’s voice, not after the numerous calls where the two of them would speak in low murmurs about the state of the world, the both of them tired out by the years. Nova Chrysalia was slowly decaying, and the both of them were well aware of that.  
  
“Yeah?” Sazh asked, sitting down next to his son’s bedside and pressing a warm hand against his forehead. No change. At least nothing bad happened that day while he was gone. That was always good. “And what’s the good news, hero?”  
  
“Well, I know you don’t approve of Zoe’s Slaughterhouse…”  
  
“It’s a dumb idea.” Sazh said firmly. “Dumb as bricks, setting people up against monsters like that.”  
  
“I entered last night.” Snow blurted out, and then continued just before Sazh could object. “I promise it was for a good cause! Not to entertain spectators or anything. They had this prize, see, and I couldn’t let it go _just in case_ …”  
  
“What are you saying, Snow?”  
  
“How would you and Dajh feel about an all expenses paid trip for two to Yuusnan?” Snow asked cheekily. “We’ll see if the fireworks might make him feel a bit better, and if the fragment I got as a prize for winning last night is actually his or not.”

  
—

  
“Well,” she stuttered as arms encased in feathers waved about. “I’m Chocolina!”  
  
“Yes, I know who you are.” Sazh replied patiently, still wondering what the vendor who set up shop by the train station was doing all the way in the north of the Wildlands. He often gave her a polite nod when he passed by and she waved frantically at him, and sometimes shook his head as her shrill enthusiasm carried some distance away while she was speaking with her customers, but never had they actually said a word to each other before.  
  
In fact, he had never seen her away from her assigned shop. She always seemed larger than life, energetic and cheerful to a fault. Sazh had never seen her so nervous before.  
  
She hopped about from one foot to the other (the action strangely familiar to him for some reason) and flapped her wings about. “It’s just, you see, I heard a teensie bit about your troubles in the past few years and, well, if you didn’t know it before — I deal in wishes! I’m here to make everyone’s wishes come true — if there’s someone who’s willing to help, of course. Wishes don’t come for free, after all, and I’m not allowed to give them out for free. Some pay money for items, others pay with items or even with spells, and —”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Sazh interrupted, feeling a headache coming. He hadn’t had to deal with so much energy in a long time — not even the trip to Yuusnan with all the excited children wandering the streets had been as exhausting as listening to this girl. “You here to offer me a wish?”  
  
She nodded enthusiastically in response, but then wilted almost immediately after as if a thought just occurred to her. “I can’t grant you the complete wish you wanted, but I think I may be able to help you out just a teeny bit!”  
  
“And you need something in return?” Sazh questioned.  
  
“Bingo!” She grinned widely and waved a winged arm over her head. “I knew you would understand!”  
  
Sazh didn’t have the time for this. As nice as the girl seemed, he doubted she sold shards of souls. “Can’t someone else do this for you?”  
  
Her expression fell. “They can. Anyone can, actually, but I wanted to offer this to you! I can’t give out wishes for free, see? And I have a wish I want to give to you and it’s something very, very precious that I want you to have. Well, it’s very, very precious and it’s something I want Dajh to have.”  
  
Wait.  
  
Sazh’s grip on the doorframe of his home tightened until he could feel the metal dig painfully into his palm. How would she know his son? “You say it was for Dajh?”  
  
“For him specifically!” She clarified.  
  
“And what do you need for this… wish?”  
  
Chocolina’s expression turned pleased. “I knew you would understand! There’s an object I’m looking for south of Aryas village I need you to bring to me. I can persuade one of the chocobos to guide you to it, and it won’t take much of your time at all. A day at the most — you’d be back lickity-split!”  
  
That sounded far too easy to be true. A day’s trip to find something in Aryas for what could possibly be a fragment of Dajh’s soul?  
  
“Why are you doing this?” He asked her even as she hopped a bit away, whistling loudly and gesturing with her wings toward one of the wild chocobos that roamed the lands. It was interesting to note that the creature came at her call, the wild beast as tame and docile under her cooing as the pets he had once seen on Cocoon.  
  
She hummed in consideration before answering, “You’ve helped me a lot, you know. You and your son — if it weren’t for you two, I wouldn’t be here. One day you might understand. I just want to do whatever I can to help you, that’s all.” She held up a wing after that, leaning forward and winking at him. “Now, no more questions, okay?”

  
—

  
He heard about Vanille and Fang’s reappearance, of course. He had been informed by a grouching Noel (who he coerced into weekly calls, despite not being able to get more from the boy than that. He still disapproved of the former time traveler’s choice of isolation and self-imposed job along with his choice of residence, but Sazh figured he’d have enough time to coax the young man into accepting more help later on) about the sudden appearance of the Order’s ‘Saint’. Further details revealed the identity of the newest addition to the church in Luxerion.  
  
“You give her my contact, hear me?” Sazh told the hunter during that conversation. “Say I expect her around.”  
  
It was one thing to bring Dajh to Yuusnan, but he didn’t want his comatose son anywhere near Luxerion and the Order, especially after Noel’s regular updates about the spread of corruption after Hope’s disappearance.  
  
To say that he was upset at the lack of contact after that was an understatement. Noel admitted in later calls that it may be because the Order was limiting her contact with anyone outside of the church.  
  
So it was with great surprise that the first call he received from someone other than Noel and Snow came from Fang.  
  
“Hey, old man!” Came the cheerful accent. “How’ve the centuries been treating you? Good, yeah? Bet you don’t look your age at all — barely any older than you were a thousand years ago. Mind if I come over to check if my theory’s correct?”  
  
“Fang.” Sazh set down the spoon he was using to stir his lunch about. The sheer relief at the sound of her voice was staggering. The years had taken so much away, but maybe now it was finally starting to give back. There was a thick wad stuck in his throat as Sazh blinked away the moisture in his eyes, surprised even at himself for the drastic reaction. “…You don’t know how glad I am to hear your voice.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” He could almost hear her grin. “See, a certain hunter and hero told me this interesting little story. I figured, since I’m already on the search for something, might as well keep that interesting tidbit on my list. Just in case _interesting_ decides to pop up.”  
  
“How interesting?” Sazh demanded, almost forgetting the sheer amount of questions he wanted to ask her about why neither she nor Vanille had contacted him before this.  
  
In response, there was a banging on his door and Sazh startled, jumping to his feet as fingers gripped the phone tighter.  
  
“You owe me favors for the rest of your life after you hear about this _interesting_ story I’ve got about this Cactair and what it was carrying out in the Dead Dunes.” Came a voice just beyond his door. “Open up, would ya? It’s freezing out here!”

  
—

  
Sazh didn’t wait for lunch to finish, didn’t wait for Fang to finish her tale before gingerly accepting the fragile fragment she was carrying with her, both hands cupped around it reverently as he slowly brought it to the coffer, almost afraid that the slightest agitation might cause the fragment to burst into pieces.  
  
“Give him more credit.” Fang told him, slinging an arm over the back of the chair she claimed as she watched him. “It’s stronger than you might think.”  
  
Sazh swallowed, his throat suddenly dry to the point of pain. “I don’t want to risk it.”  
  
 _Five pieces,_ he thought. This was it. This was what he had been searching for the past… era. Sazh didn’t know how long he’d been searching except that his thoughts were consumed by the search of fragments.  
  
And now…  
  
“Go on,” Fang urged him gently as the fragment was accepted into the coffer and Sazh hesitated with his hands hovering above the precious box. He looked up as he felt her warm hand on his shoulder, squeezing as she smiled at him. “You’ve both waited long enough for this.”  
  
Sazh nodded absentmindedly, swallowing around the lump in his throat as he took the coffer to the small boy resting in bed along numerous Academy equipment monitoring everything from his heartbeat and blood pressure to hydration and brain waves.  
  
“C’mon, son.” Sazh murmured quietly as he placed the coffer upon Dajh’s chest. “Daddy misses you, champ. Sun’s bright and shining, time to wake up now.”  
  
There were several long seconds as he held his breath and heard Fang settle into a crouch next to him to offer her support. Come on…  
  
There was a little groan and fluttering of lashes, and Sazh thought that his heart might burst out of his chest as dark brown eyes blinked up at him and Dajh yawned, looking for all the world as if he had just woken from a quick nap and not a centuries long coma.  
  
“Hi, Daddy!” Dajh greeted cheerfully, and Sazh finally felt the warmth of tears down his cheeks as he immediately drew his little boy into a tight embrace.

  
—

  
Noel insisted on keeping a lookout for the two of them as Sazh and Dajh entered through the south station of Luxerion. The Shadow Hunter didn’t trust the dark streets of the city nor any of the Order members. His presence was a silent comfort as Sazh made his way to the gates of the giant cathedral, trying to hide his distaste of the grand architecture while the rest of the city lived in much humbler buildings. He hadn’t stepped foot in Luxerion since…  
  
Since before Hope disappeared. Back then, there was no church standing in this location.  
  
Give it time, Sazh thought. Things were finally coming together. With Vanille and Fang away, with Dajh’s soul reassembled, the next thing to work on would be Hope’s disappearance, as well as Lightning. They had all the time in the world.  
  
“You can’t enter after hours!” A priest shouted at them just as Sazh moved to cover Dajh’s eyes and a shadow dropped down from the rooftops behind the priest and brought the hilt of his weapon down on the man’s neck.  
  
“Daddy?” Dajh asked behind Sazh’s hand. “Are we not supposed to be here?”  
  
Noel made sure to drag the body to a darker corner before waving Sazh on, and father and son continued their stroll into the cathedral, this time without any other interference.  
  
“Sure we can be here.” Sazh reassured his son. “We’re here to see Vanille, right? She’s going to be real excited to see you.”  
  
“Okay.” The little boy said, and then tugged on Sazh’s hand again. “Miss Vanille’s and Miss Fang’s been asleep for even longer than me, right? I’m glad we’re going to see her. She must have been really lonely.”  
  
As all the members of the Order were silently knocked unconscious by Noel, it didn’t take very long to find Vanille in the heart of the building, her eyes growing wide even as she covered her mouth with both hands at the sight of them. It didn't take long for the silent tears to fall onto his shirt as Sazh drew her into an embrace, one hand still clutching onto his son’s.  
  
(He spent the night arguing with her after that about her decision to stay with the Order, letting Dajh soothe her guilt with his childish smiles and gift of wildflowers the little boy picked from the Wildlands, slightly squashed underneath his warm palm.  
  
He left the next morning with his son, disappointed, as the next shift of church members started to trickle in.  
  
It wouldn’t be the only time he would visit to Order in attempts to convince Vanille to leave.)

  
—

  
  
“You don’t have to do this alone, alright?” Sazh told Lightning after he put Dajh to bed, standing in the doorway and watching as the pink-haired woman stared intently at her own hands. From what he had heard, she already straightened both Snow and Noel out, and was here in the Wildlands on the way to the unreachable castle in the distance.  
  
“Thank you.” She told him, but there was no emotion in the words. “But you can’t help me, and you should spend this time with your son.”  
  
“I plan on it.” Sazh said, and then walked over to the small kitchen to prepare a kettle of tea. He figured they could both use it. Everything in his house was worn smooth with time, materials fragile from years of care. His mugs were nothing more than tin cup, whatever bright paint it might have once been splashed with long worn. “He’s the most important person to me. I’m not leaving him behind, no matter where I go.”  
  
The tea leaves were fragrant as he pulled them from the cupboard. It reminded him of the old gatherings that he used to have with Snow, Noel, and… Hope.  
  
Well, Lightning was back now. And from what she was saying, there was a chance that Serah could be saved as well. _And she had seen Hope._  
  
He could feel it in his bones: things were finally coming to an end, wrapping together. Now all they needed to do was get Vanille out of the Order’s grasp, and…  
  
Thanks to technology provided by the once-Academy, the water boiled within seconds, and Sazh poured the liquid into the teapot, and then let it seep for just a minute before pouring the fragrant tea into two mugs.  
  
“But here’s the thing.” Sazh said gently as he handed Lightning a mug of tea, watching her wrap her fingers around the handle carefully. “Dajh is my son and the most important to me, but… that don’t make the rest of you any less family.  
  
“Don’t forget that, soldier girl.”

 


	2. Day 2: Places (Augusta Tower)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Does a paradox effect lie within the heart of all humans?”
> 
> “The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none exist.”
> 
> Paradox Ending: Test Subjects continuation

  
  
“Good work today!” Serah praised him brightly with a gentle clap to his shoulder as they were returning to position. “That was a handy move you had with the flanitors. I didn’t know they could melt like that!”  
  
“All part of the job, right?” Noel replied with a grin as he sheathed his sword behind his back, rotating his shoulders and neck to stretch out the kinks. "You'd think that those monsters would learn to stop showing up, especially when this isn't their territory and they should know better than to show their faces by now."  
  
"I don't blame them too much," Serah interjected, a small smile on her face as she glanced at her partner. "I mean, how are they supposed to hide from ADAM, right? The system will always find them and see where they are."  That’s how it was designed. “It could just be that they have nowhere else to go.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” Noel grumbled. “That makes me feel bad for completing our missions.”  
  
Serah paused from where she was checking Mog over, and then smiled slyly. “Liar. You’d complete the missions no matter what. You can’t stand to submit a failure report to the mission adviser. Isn’t that why we’re, what, taking on three times the amount of missions that teams can potentially do?”  
  
“We’re the only team.” Noel interjected, shaking his head as he crossed his arms and leaned against a metallic wall to wait for Serah to finish her routine inspections. “There’s no set standard before us. We’re just doing what needs to do done for the facility, that’s all.”  
  
“Fine, three times what we need to do.” Serah amended, sounding even more amused as she clutched Mog in her arms to try and hide her smile. “At this rate, there won’t be anything to do by this time next week, you know. We’d get a few days off. And then you wouldn’t have an excuse to bother the mission adviser.”  
  
“I’d be more worried about you.” Noel teased right back. “What are you going to do without missions? Knit Mog a sweater?”  
  
“Kupo!” The moogle interjected, flying over and waving his staff at Noel. “Don’t make it sound like a bad thing! Serah can do anything she wants, kupo!”  
  
“That’s right!” The pink-haired girl agreed, catching Mog by his midriff and hugging him to her. “What’s wrong with knitting? Maybe I will take up a hobby! The way you’re racing through the monsters, soon there won’t be any left at all and we’ll be out of a job. Then we might get reassigned — or decommissioned, who knows? If that’s the case, we’d have far too much time on our hands. Hobbies would be a good thing to have.”  
  
“Or promoted.” Noel disagreed. “Desk jobs. I can see you bossing everyone around.”  
  
“Hey, why _boss_?” Serah complained. “You’re making me sound bad!”  
  
 _Subject Alpha and Subject Beta, return to operations._  
  
Both Serah and Noel cringed back slightly like children with their hands caught in the cookie jar, and even Mog seemed to wilt under the voice. They looked away from each other nervously before making their way to the center of the room, facing  the doorway and standing up straight.  
  
“I’ll never get used to that thing.” Noel muttered under his breath, and Serah only spared him a sympathetic smile before they found themselves teleported back into the black.

  
—

  
“Neural telemetry between the subjects are exhibiting strong signs of chaos. Each deployment increases the accumulation by 0.836%. Soon they may be a danger to the system. Suggestion for extermination.”  
  
“Negative. Testing continues.” The man standing behind the panel never looked away from his work, and the blond girl lowered her clipboard diminutively in affirmation. “The subjects are contained, and this provides a method to study into the Unseen Realm and its effects on humans.”  
  
“Expansion of chaos diverts power from main controls.” The girl objected, although her voice never rose or lowered to express discontent.  
  
“From auxiliary.” The man corrected. “We have cycles to spare. Take three more biophysical datas. We need separate entities if their minds continue to create these falsified memories.”  
  
“Memories we did not give them.”  
  
“Memories which improve their performance three hundred fold. Decision stands. Divert auxiliary power.”  
  
There was only a brief hesitation, and the blond girl tilted her head down in assent before turning on her heel to leave, hesitating a moment as she spotted Noel leaning several meters away, frowning at her.  
  
“Suggesting Serah and I be sacked again, Alyssa?” The brunet asked, arms crossed across his chest as he raised his eyebrows at you. “You’d think that you would have given up by now.”  
  
Alyssa’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. “Flawed programming needs to be decoded and fixed. My suggestions will go through when chaos levels are high enough. It is only a matter of time.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you keep telling yourself that! Or, you know, you could try working harder if you don’t want to be ‘reprogrammed’ yourself.” He jabbed a finger only inches away from her face, but she didn’t flinch. “Like Hope said, we’re doing three hundred times the work. How about you? If there’s any funding in this department to be cut, you might want to review your own little performance sheet first.”  
  
“Impertinence. That will be added to your review.” Alyssa responded calmly before she dissolved in cubes, teleporting away. Noel sputtered as she disappeared, unsure what the word meant but understanding enough to know it was a bad thing.  
  
“Yeah, well — you, too!” He shouted at the air where she dissolved, and then grumbled softly to himself knowing that she was already gone. He stepped toward the middle of the room where there were several consoles and a spinning ball of energy, bright and powerful, suspended in the middle of a thick wall to protect it. Noel sniffed in indignation for a moment before he sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck to relieve a non-existent ache caused whenever he had to deal with the blond girl.  
  
“You know,” He said, tone changing and softening just the slightest as his eyes darted between the silver-haired man standing behind the console and the ball of energy in the room, “You really need to get out more, Hope. Before you end up as nuts as Alyssa.”  
  
“Your presumption of my difference from other entities here is false. All life here is  fabricated, and my presence is required in the Core room in order to regulate systems for ADAM. I do not leave this room.”  
  
“Workaholic.” Noel accused, although his tone was lighter.  
  
It was only then that Hope turned to look at him, expression as blank as Alyssa’s and eyes reflecting the light in the room, making them a vibrantly bright color oscillating from blue to green and back again.  
  
“Your concern for this duplicate has been noted. As has been your mission report. There is no need to travel here  to report in when your file has already been logged.”  
  
“Just wanted to make sure that Alyssa hasn’t convinced you to sack us yet. And I’m checking in on you. Serah’s been worried, but she’s not going to say it. You work too hard, Hope. All this standing around in one room isn’t good for anyone — even Alyssa gets to go where she wants! So, you know. Being our mission director and all, I’m formally inviting you to come join us at least once. See what it’s like out there. Breathe some fresh air!”  
  
“Air is not necessary. But your comment has been added to file. You’re here for your next assignment?”  
  
Noel grinned. “Ready when you are!”  
  
Hope needed, the movement terse as he typed out phrases on his consoles. “New testing protocols pre-configured. Mission is to eradicate errors within floor thirteen. Multiple hostiles lifeforms have developed within that level which need to be found and eliminated.”  
  
“Roger that!”  
  
With that, Noel did a mock salute with two fingers, and faded away with the teleport cubes as Hope relocated him to starting operations.  
  
 _Error within mental core architectures of Subject Alpha and Subject Beta. System log documents memory flux increasing per mission. Reprogram._  
  
“Reprogramming unnecessary. Additional instability within Subjects result in increased output. Test subjects will continue with experimentation until research on chaos has been completed, or they self-terminate. Precautions for duplicate models of Noel Kreiss and Serah Farron biometric data unnecessary. Should their programs malfunction, more models can be reproduced from originals.”  
  
The silver-haired man paused in his words, and then added. “Increase of emotional familiarity direct correlation to increased production output. Belay orders for new individual biometric data. Auxiliary power requested for extra processing power for Hope Estheim and Alyssa Zaidelle entities.”  
  
 _Access denied. Artificial intelligence within the system creates conflict and slowed processor output._  
  
“Not artificial intelligence; requesting expanded emotional output for entities to continue research. This entity retains command structure for override of all system programs, but is also a part of the system.. Once again, requesting auxiliary power.”  
  
 _Is that a threat?_  
  
Despite the whir of programs powering up in response to the system’s agitation and filling the room with the pulse of threatening energy, the silver-haired man did not react. He was not programmed to react to threats, or to respond to the AI’s anger. If the system wanted him threatened, it would need to reroute enough power for him to contain the capacity for fear.  
  
“The Eden Restoration Project can only be successful with this entity. Request auxiliary power.”  
  
The machine was silent for several long cycles.

  
—

  
“ _That,_ ” Serah griped as she trudged after her partner, hands trying to undo the tangles in her hair. “Was disgusting! I’ve never felt so gross in my life. I’m going to need two bottles of shampoo to get this slime out of my hair. How did all those things manage to hide out in the thirteenth floor? I need to have a talk with Hope about how the system managed to miss that! There’s got to be a glitch somewhere if those things were allowed to duplicate that much before we got assigned to it.”  
  
“You can talk to Hope about that.” Noel said, although he wasn’t as bothered as Serah was.  
  
“Or you can stop taking extra missions and learn knitting or something.” Serah grumbled, although her good cheer was hard to keep down, even with the amount of slime in her hair.  
  
"What, and make sweaters for Mog? He doesn't need it!"  
  
"Kupo! What if I want sweaters?”  
  
Noel rolled his eyes the moogle flew in a circle around his head, and raised his hand to wave Mog away. “You’d probably like the sweaters that Serah makes you more than sweaters I make you.”  
  
“That’s because Serah would make better sweaters, kupo!”  
  
“See?” He turned his head to give his partner a flat look, even as Serah attempted to hide her giggles behind a hand. “Biased!”  
  
“Welcome back Serah, Noel!” Came a chipper voice from ahead of them, and Noel drew back instinctively from the unfamiliarity of it. He looked over, hand already on the handle of his sword, to see Alyssa smiling at the two of them, standing with her head tilted and a hand holding onto her elbow behind her back. The smile was so familiar that he took a step backward, shaken by just how disoriented he felt.  
  
“Alyssa!” Serah’s exclamation was full of happiness as she stepped forward toward the scientist. “I thought you’ve been too busy with your latest project...”  
  
“Never too busy for you guys, though.” The blonde replied, a smile on her face as she backed up into the room they had originally been designated for their base of operations. "This would be your third mission for the day, wouldn't it? You guys sure have been busy! Make sure you don’t wear yourselves out, okay?”  
  
“We could say the same about you.” Serah’s response was enthused and happy, grateful to see a friend she had dearly missed. “I’ve barely seen you and Hope around lately. It seems like a hard job keeping this place running.”  
  
“Well, things have been a bit hectic around here.” Alyssa admitted. “We’ve been revamping! Come see for yourself.”  
  
With that, she walked into the room with a mysterious smile, and Noel and Serah exchanged a look before the pink-haired girl gave a smile as well and followed along, Noel and Mog following after her.  
  
The room... that wasn’t the operations room. Noel knew that room. That was the Core room, as if it had been moved from the area it was in, but it was more likely that the pathways had been changed to lead them to a different place. The new room was… brighter than what he remembered, the light warmer. While there had previously been no furniture at all and only the central terminal, now there was the bare minimal scattering of chairs in an aesthetically pleasing design, along with a heavy desk glowing with holographic projections. Still austere, but… Was this what Alyssa had meant by ‘revamping’?  
  
“Back already?”  
  
The voice was mildly surprised, but not unpleasantly so, and Noel found himself smiling just as widely as Serah.  
  
“Did you miss us?” He asked, crossing the room in several large steps to greet Hope, just as Serah was bounding up next to him as well. She was probably more excited to see the silver-haired man, especially since she had been so uncertain about bothering him while he was busy before.  
  
“The two of you work far too fast to be missed.” Hope praised, just a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. He was still standing in front of the same console Noel had last seen him at, but was finally looking away, his stance more relaxed than before. It was as big a change as Alyssa’s friendly demeanor was.  
  
 _Strange._  
  
"Don't underestimate us," Noel responded with a confident grin, a distant part of himself feeling as though this was all a script to play along to even as he put a hand on his hip and waved the other hand to signify the flippancy of his words. "We're the best team you have!"  
  
“I can’t argue that.” Hope’s tone was light, teasing, and all at once Noel found himself almost at a loss for words. “You guys are the only team we have. I’m sorry we keep asking this of you and can’t spare more personnel to get everything done, but —”  
  
“Don’t worry about it, Hope!” Serah interjected, a smile on her face which warned him not to bring it up again. “You’re busy with your work, and it’s not like we have other things pressing for our time. Besides, we’re the ones agreeing to take on all these missions. If it were that troublesome, we wouldn’t be bothering to do more than we have to, right?”  
  
“...Of course.” Hope agreed reluctantly. He still looked somewhat guilty, though. “If that’s the case, then I’m afraid I have one more mission for the day. It’s rather urgent, but… thanks to the technology in this tower, if you need time to clean up first, that can be arranged.”  
  
“That would be nice, yeah.” Serah said with obvious relief as she pulled on a strand of her grime-filled hair and grimaced. Noel nodded along, one hand up to press against developing kinks in his neck. It had been a long day for the both of them. “It’s the first time I’ve heard ‘urgent’ attached to a mission, though.”  
  
“Yes.” Hope clarified. “Unlike all previous assignments, this precludes an intruder from the outside.”  
  
“Outside?” Noel asked, as he and Serah accepted the datapads handed to them by Alyssa. His eyes skimmed over the text briefly, but then gave it back to the girl as he figured Serah or Hope would fill him in on what he had to do.  
  
“It’s been a long time since anyone has tried to invade Augusta Tower,” Alyssa spoke up, voice worried. “We’ve been isolated for a long time because the work we do here is so sensitive. We’re working on building the future, you know? It’s hard work making sure everything goes the way it’s supposed to go!”  
  
“So someone’s actually breaking in from the outside?” Serah sounded bewildered. “Why would anyone do that? I mean, everyone knows to leave this place alone, right?”  
  
Alyssa nodded along with the words.  
  
“The only knowledge we know is that the man who entered did so not twenty minutes ago and managed to disable the surveillance on the entire first floor. This will be a two-part mission: one person to take out the intruder, and the other to save an important data chip that we —” At this, Hope’s head tilted slightly as if he were hearing something the rest of them couldn’t hear. “That I need.”  
  
“Data chip?” Noel asked uncertainly. As much as he would have liked to bring that back personally, from the descriptions it sounded a better idea for Serah to be bringing in the chip while he took care of the invader.  
  
“Yes.” A few taps on a hologram and an image was brought up, pale green and slowly rotating as Hope zoomed in to bring up more detail. “It’s attached to the main terminal on the first floor, within a black box at the very bottom of the terminal to prevent damage in case of emergencies. While all that is necessary is the chip, the entire box would be preferable. It’s most likely what the intruder is after, so we need one person distracting him while the other retrieves the information.”  
  
“I’ve got it.” Serah said, handing the datapad back to Alyssa. “Don’t worry about this, we won’t let the intruder damage any more of the Tower.”  
  
“We really owe you.” Alyssa told her. “This just isn’t something we can take care of on our own, you know!”  
  
“Well, that’s why we’re here.” Serah said cheerily. “Just leave it up to us!”

  
— 

  
The cleaning process was quick and unsatisfying, but it did the job and Serah’s hair was a pale pink color again rather than an amalgamation of green and black slime and oils dripping down and seeping into her clothing. Still, she would have rathered a nice shower than what they got. She’d have to look into it after this, since they didn’t have all that much time before the systems containing the intruder to one level would fail and once the person got access to the elevator…  
  
“How about you go after the data chip?” Serah asked, watching Mog float in circles above them, obviously tired out from the day. The moogle had taken to drooping just slightly and muffling little yawns rather than making retorts at Noel, and was nice almost nodding off in mid-air. That wouldn’t do. She needed him awake and aware for the upcoming fight. Of course, if she just went after the data chip, then Mog would be allowed to rest on her shoulders, but…  
  
“That’s not what we’re supposed to do.” Noel said with a shrug, just watching the flashing lights as the elevator went down. “We’ve got our assigned jobs.”  
  
“Are you saying you don’t think I can handle the invader?” It didn’t take much to work up the sickly-sweet accusation, and the tone made the hunter freeze and slowly raise his hands in defeat, leaning away. Serah added a smile to her words, reaching out to grab Mog from the air and hold him close to her. The words were mostly empty, since she long understood that Noel trusted her and understood she could fight (he just had a tendency of being protective, but Serah realized that came from his past).  
  
Still, it was the quickest way to get what she wanted.  
  
(And she couldn’t help that twinge of curiosity, because behind layers of… _something,_ there was an unsettling feeling that she couldn’t pinpoint. It made her want to lash out, to push against what she was supposed to do and question everything. Wasn’t there something important…?)  
  
“I’m not saying anything,” Noel said cautiously. “But you’re better with these computers and I’m —”  
  
“Better at fighting?” Serah interjected sweetly.  
  
“What? No! I mean, yes, but I’m not saying that —”  
  
The elevator stopped and Serah stepped forward before the twitch of her lips could give her away, Mog peeking over her shoulder at Noel to watch him attempt to sputter his way out of this mess. The moogle looked more awake now and was holding a little hand to his face in amusement even as his bobble shook watching the hunter.  
  
“Just get the data chip, Noel.” Serah concluded. “You know where it is, right? And let me take care of this one. Maybe I just want to see the villain who would want to see humanity’s doom.”  
  
“And what?” Noel asked, although it sounded like he had already given up the argument. “Invite him around again for tea?”  
  
“Maybe I will!” Serah responded cheerfully. “Or maybe I just need his size so I can knit him a sweater to match Mog. I’ll make you a blue one.”  
  
“Is that an incentive to finish all these missions so you can learn to knit or is that supposed to be a clue to slow down so we don’t run out of missions so that never happens?” Noel asked, sounding genuinely confused.  
  
Serah just laughed in response, and then turned away. “I’ll meet you back for debriefing.”  
  
The first floor looked old, especially compared to the other places in the Tower they’ve been sent to. The lights weren’t as bright on the bottom floor, some sparking as Serah realized that was most likely due to the intruder blazing in and destroying things. It was almost a blazen trail of destruction, and she frowned in distaste as she passed several small rooms with security cameras destroyed and barely hanging by a wire. Other areas were completely iced over, white and gleaming, turning austere rooms into a thing of beauty.  
  
The pink-haired girl stopped for a moment at a doorway, reaching out to run her fingers down a metallic wall frosted over with brilliant geometric designs thanks to the ice.  
  
She shivered suddenly, not because of the cold but because of the realization that this would be the first time in a very long time she wouldn’t have Noel has a back-up in case something happened. The two of them had fought all their battles in Augusta Tower together, and now she was going off on her own based on a whim.  
  
Thanks to the damage on this floor, Hope had warned her before they left, communications would be in tatters. That included communications between her and Noel and not only the fact that Hope and Alyssa wouldn’t be able to hear if they needed help.  
  
“Mog?” She questioned, voice barely above a whisper. The quiet ‘kupo?’ she got in response told her the moogle felt the danger as sharply as she did, and she reached out for him. Without question, Mog did a quick flip in the air and transformed down into Serah’s grasp into the intricate bow she was well used to.  
  
She continued on quietly, following the trail of ice and faint sounds of items being tossed about, until she could clearly hear the battle between the intruder and the security bots still functioning on this floor.  
  
She leaned against the wall outside the room the noise was coming from, and carefully pulled back Starseeker’s bowstring in preparation of a fight. If she did this right, then she would be able to take down the intruder with only one shot, and then have the rest of the security bots help her dump him out.  
  
If she didn’t do this right, well… it would just be a drawn out fight. Of course she could win without Noel.  
  
With one intake of breath, Serah spun on one heel and pulled up her bow, the drawstring brushing her cheek as she focused on the one man man fighting against the sparking and dying bots. She released the arrow with her exhale, lips turning up as her aim carried true.  
  
The man roared and turned around before the arrow could connect, and her smile faltered as she watched him bat the projectile to the side with supernatural reflexes. _Impossible!_  
  
Her eyes darted to the arrow now embedded in an iced over console and then back to the intruder, finally taking in his appearance. Tall, taller than anyone she had met before, wearing a thick trench-coat and gloves (where were his weapons? Surely he couldn’t have taken on all the bots without a weapon!), with slicked back blond hair and.. extremely startled blue eyes.  
  
“Serah?” The man gasped, and she felt like her world was collapsing around her.  
  
She pulled Starseeker’s bowstring back again, a second arrow ready to fire despite the slight tremors in her arm.  
  
How do you know me? She wanted to demand, but had a feeling (a whir in the back of her mind) that demanded she not go down that path. Her objective was to take out the invader, or at the very least distract him until Noel’s mission was complete and the hunter would come as her back-up.  
  
“Serah, what are you doing?” And now the man sounded incredulous, still moving about to avoid the attacks of the group of security bots. He looked between her and the rest of his attackers, wrists crossed in front of himself as he defended against the attacks while he connected the dots. “Are you actually helping them?”  
  
“Of course I am!” Serah shouted out, not knowing why this man’s voice, his eyes, his disbelief at her actions, boiled her blood so. She kept her aim on him, the weight of the bow miniscule compared to the turmoil of her thoughts. “You — you’re the one trying to stop ADAM, trying to stop Hope from helping everyone—”  
  
“What are you talking about?” He demanded, and now stopped trying to defend as he jumped into action, taking out another security bot (did he really just _punch it into pieces?_ ) before ducking under the weapon of another.  
  
She wished Noel was here with her right now, wished that she could hear Alyssa’s voice in her ear telling her what she should do. For some reason, her arm just _wouldn’t_ release. She could have shot him at least three times by now, why…?  
  
Finally, _finally,_ her fingers let go and she heard the man shout out as the arrow embedded itself into his arm.  
  
“Serah, ADAM is destroying the human race in the future!” The man yelled at her above the whirs of multiple bots realizing that they might actually have the slimmest chance now that their opponent was injured and slowed. “I just came from Academia — the fal’Cie is turning everyone into Cie’th, and none of the historical data matches up. Serah, you’re protecting the enemy — this thing is what _killed_ Hope!”  
  
 _No_. She didn’t want to listen to any more of those lies. Ignoring the burning in her veins, Serah narrowed her eyes and drew another arrow, this time aiming to make sure this intruder would shut up after she was done here. 

  
— 

  
“Serah’s Chaos readings are through the roof.” Alyssa told him, sounding sad. “Any more, and we’ll lose her. Whatever she found down on the first floor is overwriting our suppression codes.”  
  
Hope closed his eyes, ducking his head in acknowledgement as he tried his best to ignore the smug presence of the AI suffocating the room. Initially, he increased performance levels outweighed increased Chaos, but numerous experimentation concluded that beyond a certain percentage, performance was debilitated by defiance.  
  
It would be a shame to lose their best team so far.  
  
“Bring them back up,” Hope finally said, one hand resting gently on the console before him. “And reprogram them.”


	3. Day 3: Colours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An argument of colors. Aina Stein (Hope's assistant in 500AF) grew up with some... peculiar women.

Her mother was at it again, and while Aina knew that she should already be in bed, listening in to her mother and her mother’s group of friends was always cause for great entertainment.  
  
“I’m not blind!” She watched her mother shriek, flailing her arms above her in a gesture that was really only allowed with her friends. Her coworkers would have been ashamed to see her now, but that didn’t matter because none of them would ever know the extent of her vehemence, of her attention to detail.  
  
Her mother’s childhood friends, on the other hand, were very used to her shrill tones whenever she disagreed with them.  
  
“You guys are the ones blind if you can’t see it! It is clearly a blue-grey color—”  
  
“Teal,” a woman with tied back blonde hair argued, leaning forward from where she was sitting at the edge of her chair in the dining room where they held their little ‘meetings’. “It’s definitely teal!”  
  
“Oh, would you look at this,” Another woman muttered, curly brown hair spilling over her shoulders as she pointed to a color swatch (one of many dozens spread out over the table) and then squinted down to read, “ _Polar ice_. Maybe that’s the color you mean to say instead of blue-grey?”  
  
Her mother snatched the color patch away with a huff, startling the brunette. “Really? _Really?_ Are we really going to bring in—” She looked down at the swath and blanched, “Are these those color palettes you get to choose your paint?”  
  
“Well, I’m not an artist,” the brunette grumbled, pushing up thick-framed glasses. “I’m an _Academy researcher,_ why would I need to know color names?”  
  
“I think it’s more…” a woman with long black hair pulled into a ponytail picked up one of the color cards. “ _Blue dragon_ than polar ice, really. Who knew all these shades existed?”  
  
“It’s definitely a shade of green,” the last of their group argued, thick silver bangles clinking around her wrist as she pushed back all the blue colors and then picked up several pale green options. “Maybe somewhere between _lido green_ and _eucalyptus_.”  
  
The blonde squinted at the colors that had been sorted out, and then asked, “Isn’t that all just the same shade of green?”  
  
“They’re not.” The grey-haired woman with bangles snapped back quickly, obviously irritated at the dismissal.  
  
“Would you all just _stop_ with these — these infernal things?” Her mother swept her arm across the dining table and ignored the other women as the protested loudly while she shoved all the different pieces of colored paper into a corner. “No one uses _paint swatches_ for this!”  
  
“Just ‘cause _you_ don’t use paint swatches…” The brunette pouted, but didn’t move to take any of her colors back even while she stared after the pile longingly.  
  
The lady with black hair pulled out her datapad, nodding. “You’re right. Painters have these strange names… we should go straight to the source of it.”  
  
The blonde leaned over her shoulder, and frowned. “I like… B0C4DE, but isn’t going into color codes a bit over the top?”  
  
“Don’t be a moron,” The black haired lady stated even as the other shuffled around the table to take a closer look at whatever she had brought up on her datapad. “There are names on the other side, see? B0C4DE… that’s Light Steel Blue.”  
  
“Ooooh,” the brunette sighed wistfully. “I like that color.”  
  
“This is far too complicated,” The blonde complained, but then pointed with her finger, “But I’d bet money on a shade of either aqua or cyan.”  
  
The grey-haired woman frowned. “That is _exactly_ the same color!”  
  
“It’s not! Just because _you’re_ color blind doesn’t mean the rest of us are!”  
  
“I can’t believe you guys are still arguing this based on _pictures_. Pictures are different colors under different lightning, you know.” Her mother responded, sounding even more indignant. “ _My_ grandmother was actually here in Academia back then, you know? And she says that it’s a beautiful dark sea green. She would knew, she even kept a picture…”  
  
“See!” Silver bangles clinked again as the grey-haired woman grinned. “It _is_ a shade of green!”  
  
Rather than respond to that, the woman with black hair frowned as she examined her screen. “Wait a minute… why is _dark sea green_ actually lighter than _sea green_? Why is _light sea green_ blue?”  
  
“Oh wow, it is.” The brunette confirmed.  
  
That that point, Aina froze as she accidentally pushed against the chair she had been hiding behind and the wooden legs dragged noisily across the floor, jerking all the women in the dining room to attention.  
  
“Aina!” Her mother exclaimed, and stood up from where she had been sitting, hands gesturing for her friends to stay sitting as she stalked toward the little girl. “What are you doing up? You should have been in bed an hour ago!”  
  
She sounded flustered, and Aina could only look on with wide eyes as she tried to hide her guilty expression. She didn’t want to say she was eavesdropping, but…  
  
“I needed to go to the toilet.” The little girl finally said, sticking a thumb in her mouth to play up her small size and young age.  
  
Her mother sighed and then picked Aina up before turning to her friends to say, “Just give me a moment. I’ll just put her in bed again.”  
  
“Oh, it’s fine.” The blonde lady said, and waved them on, winking at Aina when her mother turned around to carry her out. “My son gets up in the middle of the night all the time as well.”  
  
Aina waited until her mom carried her to the top of the stairs and then to her bedroom, setting her down on her cold bed and pulling the blankets around her. “What were you talking about, mama?”  
  
“Oh, not much.” Her mother sighed, and then leaned over to kiss Aina’s forehead. “Mommy just has a bet to win… and you, munchkin, need to sleep at regular hours if you want to grow up and get into the Academy.”  
  
Aina nodded. That was all her mother always said, and she didn’t mind. She wanted to get into the Academy when she grew up. The little girl closed her eyes as she felt her mother’s hand sifting through her hair gently, and quickly fell to a state of half-dreams.  
  
“You’ll need to be in the Academy in twenty-five years,” was the last thing she heard her mother whisper, “And then tell me what color Director Estheim’s eyes really are when he wakes up again.”


	4. Day 4: the Ladies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanille offers to make Serah's wedding dress with a little help from everyone else. Takes place in FFXIII-2.

“Oh,” Serah breathed out with a hand over her mouth and eyes wide. “Oh, Vanille. It’s _beautiful._ ”  
  
The Pulsian girl beamed brightly, giggling nervously from where she was standing behind Serah, hands on the other girl’s shoulders. “I’m glad you like it. I’m not done yet, of course, but I think from now on I’m going to need your opinion on which direction to go with this!”  
  
Serah could hardly respond as she stepped forward and reached out a hand to run a finger down a string of beads,the touch feather-light just in case she disturbed something she wasn’t supposed to. The dress laid out on the plastic mannequin was a blend of traditions, of crushed velvets and pale beads, sheer headdress and fur trim. The entire thing, Serah noted, was in shades of white.   
  
“I had a lot of help,” Vanille admitted, although she sounded happy about it. Bounding up past the other girl, Vanille pointed at various parts of the outfit. “Remember when Fang asked for your help hunting down the Megistotherian?”  
  
Serah remembered that — the odd request since she and Fang rarely interacted, and Serah herself was not well known as a warrior, despite the amount of fighting she had to do. The day had been extremely warm, and Vanille had feigned a head cold while Snow and Noel disappeared off somewhere she never found out about. Serah had expected her sister to say no immediately, but to her great surprise Lightning had just given a nod to Fang when she heard the request.   
  
They spent the day in the heat of the sun, Serah’s skin blistering even as she listened intently to Fang’s quick instructions and tips of how to better hunt on Gran Pulse. They tracked the animal down to a ridge over the entrance of the Mah’habara caverns where Fang charged in and Serah followed. It was a long and grueling fight in blistering heat, but Serah remember how proud she felt when Fang finally pinned the beast down with her spear by its neck, and then yelled at Serah to finish it.   
  
“Of course I remember.” Serah said.   
  
Vanille beamed at the confirmation. “Well, that was your kill. And this is the pelt.” She gestured to the pure white fur trim on the dress edges. “We tanned the leather and both Noel and I made some of the jewellery here.”  
  
She pointed to various sections of the dress as Serah watched, intent on taking in every detail she could. “These ones are from Oerba — for scholars and caretakers. The beads attached to them are from everyone, actually.”  
  
Vanille grinned sheepishly. “I asked them all to make at least one for you.” Then she pointed to the one attached to the low collar of the dress. “ _That_ one’s from Snow. He knows it’s for you, but doesn’t know it’s being used for this.”  
  
The pale blue bead was large and somewhat lumpy, and Serah giggled at the thought of her hero working on it.  
  
“Here,” Vanille said as she turned the mannequin around to reveal the back of the dress, gesturing to the fabric that draped down at such a length Serah knew it would reveal the small of her back. What was holding the fabric together was an intricate array of leather knots, the pattern delicate and forming geometric designs.   
  
“Oh.” Serah breathed out again, feeling a loss of words.   
  
“I got Noel to help me on that,” Vanille admitted in an almost whisper, her smile soft as she gazed at the work. “He taught me a little on Farseer traditions as well. That knot is a symbol for women to be married. He told me he’s seen it only a few times and didn’t know how to make it himself, so it took us a while before we got it right.”  
  
It was certainly more beautiful than Serah had ever dreamed a dress could be. Before Vanille had approached her asking to make her wedding dress for her, Serah entertained thoughts of a simple white thing with maybe a few quick embellishments to personalize it.   
  
This… she trailed her fingers across the knot, holding her breath as she felt the soft leather. Every inch of this dress was beautiful.   
  
“Here’s the highlight!” Vanille giggled out to her as she lifted the asymmetrical bottom. “Look!”  
  
Near the fur trim, nearly invisible, were tiny pink and white roses stitched carefully into the velvet.   
  
“She’s too proud to say anything, but Lightning did that.” Vanille admitted. “I asked if she wanted to help with this, and… did you know Sazh knows how to embroider? He said he learned it from his wife, and he taught Lightning a few designs so that she could work on a little bit of your dress as well.”  
  
All of this was bringing tears to Serah’s eyes. It was all so much…  
  
“This is amazing. It’s beautiful.” Serah said, nearly choking out her words. She brushed a hand over her eyes to wipe away the moisture, feeling her heart swell within her chest. “This is — thank you _so much_ , Vanille.”  
  
Vanille’s smile turned gentler and she carefully took Serah’s hands in her own. “No… thank _you._ Fang and I… we’re the last people who remember Oerba. Noel’s the last person to remember the Farseers. For a while, I thought all our traditions would just die with us… but it’s not true. Because of you… because of everyone here, we managed to a little of it back. And you…”  
  
“I love it.” Serah blurted out. “This is so much better than anything I’ve ever dreamed of, even as a little girl. I want to know all about your traditions. I want to know what everything on this dress means. Everything.”  
  
And now Vanille was starting to look a bit misty-eyed herself even as she continued to smile widely.   
  
They must have stood there for nearly a minute clinging to each other’s hands before Vanille jumped to attention once again, startling Serah. “Oh! Here, you need to try it on! We’ve got make sure it fits, first. Can’t have you getting married next week with an ill-fitted dress. You change, and I’ll go get you the earrings that Hope bought you. You should see them — he’s got good taste!”  
  
As the cheerful Pulsian left the room, Serah spent a good minute just admiring the dress on the mannequin before carefully pulling it off and changing, reveling in the soft fabrics and leather as it brushed against her skin.   
  
Perfect. It was just… perfect.   
  
“You look beautiful.”  
  
Serah whirled around at her sister’s voice, and smiled so wide she felt like her face could crack at any moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so happy. “Lightning! I thought you were the one who always told me to knock before I entered a room?”  
  
“I knocked,” Lightning teased, walking up to Serah. She cupped her sister’s face in her hands and smiled, gentler than Serah could ever remember even as she leaned into the touch. “You were just too distracted to hear me.”  
  
Serah grinned sheepishly, unable to deny it.   
  
“My sweet little sister, all grown up.” Lightning breathed out, and pulled back slightly, now looking lost despite her smile. “Just look at you. What am I going to do now?”  
  
“Oh, Claire… you make it sound like you’re losing me. You’re never going to lose me.”  
  
“I better not.” Lightning murmured, and then dropped her hands to pull something from her pouch. “Here. Vanille sent me with Hope’s present. These are for you.”  
  
There were a pair of blue crystal earrings, the same exactly color of Serah’s eyes, and she couldn’t help her sly, “Are you sure these aren’t for you? We do have the same eyes, after all…”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lightning responded easily. “I told him you’d need something blue.”  
  
“Well, then.” Serah intoned as she accepted the earrings gratefully and carefully put them on. “Tell him thank you, and that they’re beautiful.”  
  
Lightning nodded, but then said, “One more.” And reached back into her pouch again to pull out a diamond hairpin, gesturing for Serah to turn around before gathering her little sister’s hair into a messy bun on the side of her head, sliding the pin through easily.   
  
Serah watched their reflection from the mirror in the room as Lightning smiled at her from behind and placed both hands on her shoulders.   
  
“…Something borrowed.” Her sister finally said. “From Lebreau. Old traditions, new dress…”  
  
“Blue earrings, borrowed jewelry.” Serah finished, and reached out to touch the delicate hairpiece.   
  
Her reflection flickered, broke for a mere moment into swirling blackness in the antique mirror, before it returned to normal. Serah ignored it.   
  
“It’s perfect.” She breathed out, and watched as Lightning smiled gently at her.


	5. (Divergence: the Other)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if Lumina wasn't the only look-alike? Bhunivelze does not need weakness. Bhunivelze does not want weakness.

He was everything God had cast out.  
  
Missing; incomplete. He was the one too shy to speak up, too angry to do more than stomp his feet, too sad to make a difference. He was the one who clung to Lumina and hid behind Vanille, letting the Saint whisper soothing words to him as she ran fingers through his hair, just repeating that soothing motions for hours at a time. He was the scared little boy who cried shamelessly for his own future and for the future of those he loved because he knew what was going to happen, and he couldn’t say.  
  
Lumina had glared the first time they met. She hadn’t trusted him, had danced around him in circles and openly mocked his wide eyes and withdrawn stance. They had known each other instantly, but there was a barrier between the two of them. She was the rejected parts of a woman who longed to be brave and grow up far too quickly — he was the cast off excess of God’s plan.  
  
"Well, that’s not fair!" She mocked him, leaning forward in the air with one finger tapping cruelly smiling lips. "She cast me off ages ago! Why, oh why, would he want to keep you?"  
  
He wasn’t sure. He was sure. Once upon a time, a hurt and scared little boy decided to get stronger not by throwing away his emotions but by embracing them; he understood that his weaknesses were what helped him survive and he turned those weaknesses into determination, into strength. Emotions became the shields, and memories became swords. Once upon a time Hope Estheim had done what very few succeeded in and transformed human pain into progression for mankind. He turned loss and loneliness into a future for everyone else around him.  
  
Hundreds of years later, God disagreed.  
  
"I don’t know," the boy lied, unable to lift his voice to more than a whisper. It was alright for him to lie; he was the liar, the weak, the child scared of everything.  
  
Lumina gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him in the slightest, but then reached out to tug him to her, giggling at the look of shock on his face. She was a few inches shorter than him, but that didn’t account for much when she preferred walking in the air as opposed to having her feet on the ground.  
  
"You can’t use the same name, you know." She pointed out. "That would be too confusing, and it wouldn’t be true. Because we’re not our real selves, we need new names. So what should we name you…?"  
  
He didn’t understand how she could jump from one emotion to another, how she could switch between the fond tone and malice, but her hands were surprisingly warm.  
  
"And those clothes!" She tsked, letting go of him to tug on his capelet a moment until he cringed away from her, pulling the fabric back self-consciously. "It wouldn’t do to look like clones, you know. Someone’s gotta figure out that we’re different, or else people will panic. Everyone knows who Hope Estheim is. If you wear the same thing, that’s who people will mistake you for. And you don’t want that… do you?"  
  
The words were mocking, but he didn’t mind them. He shook his head, eyes still glued to the dirt underneath his sneakers.  
  
Lumina took that as an open invitation, and laughed and laughed.  
  
—  
  
She dressed him like a doll in pale blue-greens and whites, a direct contrast to her red and black ensemble. Everything faded and nothing bright in the fabrics, all designed for him to blend into the background and not draw attention. She left him with Vanille, whose green eyes had teared up upon seeing him and spent hours just brushing his hair while he closed his eyes to listen to her humming.  
  
"Stay out of sight." Lumina warned him, but he could do little when members of the Order would come to speak with the Saint and would whisper to each other when they saw him, words such as _director_ and _miracle_ thrown around. He tried to stay put, he really did, but there was an insatiable curiosity about the world now (what had happened to it now that he was gone?) which led him outside the gates of the Order while Vanille was asleep, still dreaming of the day when Fang would return and things would be alright again.  
  
The sunlight almost felt too bright, and he stuck to the shadows, eyes wide as he watched citizens go about their daily business; watched cats and dogs roam the streets, some brushing up against his legs in attempts to gain some food from him. He pet them absentmindedly, crouched in a corner and trying hard to look inconspicuous as his eyes hungrily drank in the sight of people talking and laughing with each other.  
  
It didn’t last long, though, until a young woman sat down next to him, smiling gently as he turned wide eyes to her and asking if he was lost: _are you alright? Where are your parents?_  
  
He didn’t answer her, but attempted to smile in reassurance. When her concerns grew, he only pointed to the cathedral. He wasn’t alone. He had Vanille, and she was there. The woman didn’t look any less worried, but stopped asking her questions, instead opting to share an apple with him, which he took graciously.  
  
He snuck out again to meet the strange woman again the next day and the next, and they found a kind of silent camaraderie in watching life pass by around them.

  
—

  
The nameless woman was gone one day, and he knew without a doubt that death had finally taken her.

  
—

  
"Are you okay?"  
  
He startled, but pressed his face further into his knees, tightening his arms around his legs even as he tensed up at the voice. He knew who that was. Knew that it was one of the faces he wasn’t supposed to allow to see him. Instead of answering, he shook his head slightly and prayed the man would go away and leave him alone.  
  
There was a quiet swish of clothing next to him and a warmth, and he knew that his prayer hadn’t come true.  
  
"You’ve been sitting here for a few days already." The voice was tired, but warm.  
  
There was a sound against the wall behind them, and he snuck a peek around his knees at the young man who sat down next to him. Worn blue clothing and unbrushed brown hair. The man (the Shadow Hunter, he heard from various townsfolk through the days) had his eyes closed as he leaned his head against the wall. He didn’t know why the man was sitting with him, but it didn’t seem right to just come out and ask.  
  
Not to mention, Lumina had warned about drawing the wrong sorts of attention. This, he thought, might have been what she was talking about.  
  
As if mere thoughts of her was enough to summon her presence, he heard the familiar huff of amused breath next to him just as the Shadow Hunter tensed.  
  
"You’re looking relaxed." Lumina greeted cheerfully, her blue eyes settled on the brown-haired man. "Caught your fill of big baddies for the day?"  
  
"Lumina." The Hunter greeted flatly, one eye open and watching her warily. "Had your fill of ruining people’s lives for today?"  
  
"Oh, I’m just taking a quick break." She quipped back, not missing a beat even as she skipped down the alley toward them with her hands clasped behind her back. "Didn’t want you to get too bored without me now."  
  
"Wouldn’t that be a shame." The words were dry.  
  
With Lumina now here, he looked up, arms still wrapped tight around his knees but now all he wanted to do was get back to Vanille and tell the Pulsian girl all about the faceless woman who sat with him for so many days. He had refused to tell her before, instead opting to stay silent as the girl asked him question after question, finally looking worn and defeated even as she pulled him down to her shoulder.  
  
There was a sharp intake of breath beside him, and Lumina laughed as she stopped beside him, footfall light as she spun. “Oh, so you finally noticed! Did you really think that it was just some lost child in need of your help? Did you think that maybe you could make it up to him if you helped a child who looked like him?” She stopped and bent at the waist, reaching out to wrap her arms around his head and tangle her fingers through his hair like Vanille often did, except her blue blue eyes weren’t looking at him at all. She was staring at the man besides them. “Do you like the way I dressed him? He’s such a pretty doll, isn’t he?”  
  
Noel Kreiss scowled (because that look, that look of hurt and anger and disappointment, was somehow so personal and unlike the aloof Shadow Hunter who passed through rumors and whispers), and pulled away. “So he’s like you, then.”  
  
"Yup!" There was glee in her voice. "My very own little big brother. Right now he’s too nice to say anything to you, but give him time."  
  
He wanted to protest that he wasn’t staying silent to be nice, but rather because he didn’t know what to say, what to do to make anything better in this situation. He didn’t have anything mean to say to Noel; he just didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t make the situation worse.  
  
Lumina didn’t give him time to articulate that before she pulled him up to his feet, now ignoring the hunter. “Come on, then! I think we’ve overstayed our welcome in Luxerion for now. But that’s okay. There are plenty of other places to play.”

  
—

  
He wanted to at least say goodbye to Vanille, but wasn’t given the time before they promptly arrived in Yuusnan. It was with great consternation that he found out he didn’t have any access to the extra portions of power like Lumina did — Lumina who could dance through the Chaos and summon monsters to do her bidding, who could warp reality with a twist of her pinky and glide through time and space like they were created specifically to entertain her. Lumina was borne of the Chaos and it welcomed her with adoration.  
  
He got no such welcome. The Chaos did not seek to hurt him, but nor did it respond positively to him in any way. It was as if he were invisible to the souls, as invisible as they were to God.  
  
He hadn’t a shred of magic, an inkling of power.  
  
Everything special and extraordinary about him had been left with the original, and all he was… was the leftovers.  
  
It was made especially obvious when Lumina dragged him by the hand to watch the firework, when she shoved him gleefully in front of the crowd for better seats only to give a protesting shout when someone else shoved her in return. He watched as she bared her teeth at the slow-footed adult, looking on the verge of releasing a cloud of Chaos over the vicinity just for spite. He would have spoken up then, might have gathered the courage to tug at her hand and convince her to ignore the slight, had he not tumbled over someone’s bag at that moment. Had he not attempted to steady himself against the old and rusted railing, only to have it give way underneath him.  
  
Had not the entire crowd gasped and shouted when he went tumbling over the edge of the supply line into the warehouse below.

  
—

  
It wasn’t often that Snow saw Lumina — the unnatural child of Chaos who looked so much like a younger Serah that it hurt to look at her — but their meetings were often memorable, to say the least. The first time because he had been shocked still while she laughed and brought a roof down upon his head, and the second time the girl actually pretended to be Serah ‘just to see what he would do’.  
  
Snow didn’t like her, couldn’t stand the sight of her nor her ruthless sense of humor, but he couldn’t deny that he was always glad to see her safe. She was a child, after all, a child who looked just like Serah.  
  
So he was rather surprised when he met her this time only to see her looking so serious, so uncertain for the very first time as she demanded, “Fix him!”  
  
"Fix who?" He asked dumbly before his eyes focused on the crumpled form behind Lumina, who looked like she was shaking. He had half a mind to comfort her, to reassure her, but then remembered that she liked destroying entire buildings as a side hobby and tended to laugh rather than reassure when someone got hurt.   
  
But then the figure behind her shifted and Snow’s attention was held by a very (strangely) familiar form with thin limbs and silver hair.   
  
(Unlike Noel who had never met Hope as a child before, Snow had _no doubt_ who that was.)  
  
It was mere seconds before Snow had picked up the small form and was shouting for a healer (his healing had always been subpar at best), and Lumina had somehow disappeared once again to leave him the problems (but this time, it was a welcomed problem no matter how worried he was. It had been so long, too long, since his search for Hope had died down, Snow wondered if he would ever manage to see the kid again before the end of the world. Of course, he hadn’t exactly thought _kid_ as literal).

  
—

  
He woke up tired. There was a dull ache to one side of his body, and he could feel his left leg encased in something hard. A cast?  
  
He pushed himself up from bed, eyes darting around to take in his surroundings. An unfamiliar room, lavish but sparse in furniture, that could easy fit two dozen people. His left side was bandaged up, the fabric on his arm soft while his lower leg was in a thick white cast.   
  
(He fell, he remembered, and hit a large metal crate hard and at an angle, before hitting the ground and rolling to disperse the impact.)  
  
Casts were unfamiliar to him, but understandable in this world where healing magic was rare and now a commodity. Magic was bought and sold by vendors, but those without the talent (which was the majority of the people) wouldn’t be able to use it. Easier to dilute healing spells and allow natural healing to make its own way when humanity’s cells never grew old anyway. People could afford the several weeks or months it took to heal.   
  
Lumina was gone again. He wasn’t surprised — she did whatever she wanted, after all. He never expected her to wait around for him. What did surprise him was the place he was at, and the man snoring loudly sprawled against a couch pushed to the wall.   
  
Snow Villiers hadn’t changed one bit, he thought with an almost exasperated tint. And this time the idea of hiding his face never occurred to him, seeing as it was well beyond the point of attempting to hide. Instead, he swung himself out of bed and hobbled over to the couch, wondering if he should shake the man awake or let him sleep.  
  
Luckily, the choice was made for him when Snow woke in an instant, perhaps because his instincts had been honed to the point that no one would be able to approach him while asleep and not have him know about it.   
  
“Snow,” he greeted, voice feeling raspy from disuse. There was a certain amount of apprehension, of fear and of old anger, but it was from a life not his. “What am I doing here?”  
  
“Hope.” And Snow was up in an instant, checking over the boy. “What are you doing, you shouldn’t be up yet.”  
  
He didn’t remember the l’Cie being this fussy before.  
  
“I’m not Hope.” He insisted, because it was true. Hope Estheim was gone from Nova Chrysalia, and he was all that was left. The leftover wasn’t a leader, wasn’t a beacon of stability, and certainly wasn’t ready or willing to face the world. He was just… a shadow, a shade. Not quite a full soul, sent away by God and by a man desperate to save at least a portion of his own mind.   
  
Snow appeared to ignore him, reaching almost hesitantly to place a hand on his shoulder and guide him back toward the bed. “The healer said it’ll be another two days before the cast comes off. You don’t want to make the break worse by walking on it, do you?”  
  
It was irritating, and made his temper flare. “You don’t call Lumina Serah. Don’t treat me like you know me.”  
  
That, if nothing else, stopped Snow and that worried expression (not for him, no, never for him).   
  
He gave the man a few seconds to digest that information. “Do you get it now?”  
  
He looked away, feeling like he shouldn’t be witnessing the display of emotions that crossed Snow’s face. The anger and grief and despair and resignation… he knew, of course, that those left behind had lost too many people. It was that ability to sympathise that God hated, because the Maker wanted little to do with humanity as a group, much less with individuals.   
  
He felt awkward, standing there and staring (glaring) at the floor while he waited for someone who could have once been a friend to understand that he wasn’t who Snow thought he was.   
  
“He’s like me.”   
  
And there she was again, coming out from absolutely nowhere. Lumina looked just as cheerful as ever, footfalls light as she stepped across the room, swaying to a beat no one else could hear. She whirled once, twice, with her arms above her head and her dress lifting with the centrifugal force.   
  
“Hope’s not dead.” Snow’s words were flat; forceful. “And you—”  
  
“Me what?” Lumina taunted, a finger to her cheek as she smiled slyly. “Poor baby… who do you think I am? Because I can tell you now, whatever you expect, you’re completely wrong. The same goes for him.”  
  
He didn’t have to look up from where his gaze had strayed toward the window and the bright lights of Yuusnan beyond that to know Lumina had nodded toward him.   
  
“He’s not Hope so you really shouldn’t call him that. Doesn’t seem to like any of the names I give him, though, but that’s okay.” A momentary jerk on his wrist to one direction and he found himself cheek to cheek with the pink-haired girl as she leaned up into him. “He’s just like me, so I’m not alone.”  
  
The slight concession she gave, that tiny admission, felt heavier than anything he had ever heard from her before.   
  
Snow was silent, watching their interaction with an inscrutable expression.   
  
He didn’t know what to think, but suddenly, he didn’t want to be there in the room with them at all. 

  
— 

  
Lumina came and went as she pleased after that, leaving him to heal in the spacious room that had been designated his for the time being in Yuusnan. Snow didn’t visit again, although sometimes he felt like he was being watched.   
  
He wonders, in those two days, what it would be like to lie — to claim that he was in fact Hope Estheim, that he might have one day woken up in this body and maybe forgot a few things, but claiming the name and legacy of a man who left behind people who cared for him. Would it be stealing? Would it even be a bad thing? Surely Hope wouldn’t want people to worry about them when their worry would do no good anyway.   
  
He had an elaborate story all planned out; a different tale for every hour of the day, stretched thin as he watched the sun rise and fall from behind the window, watched the sky light up with fireworks and then rest before the dawn. He didn’t need food, didn’t need sleep. What was the use of such things for someone like him?  
  
Meals were left sitting on the table where strangers brought trays, and the bed left untouched as he seated himself in front of the window to watch the ongoings of the city. So much like Luxerion, but so different at the same time. All those people, just going about their days, laughing and arguing and whispering secrets.   
  
He had secrets, too. He wanted to think that made him a little bit more like them.   
  
He wanted to sneak out again and sit amongst the busy people. He couldn’t wait for the cast to come off; then he might be able to leave the large, too silent room in the Yuusnan palace.   
  
He didn’t want to be here with the suspicious stares.   
  
It wasn’t until the healer came again to take off the cast (a strange man garbed in silver and black with pale hair and a stern expression as he ordered more rest for the recently broken bone) that Snow showed up again, this time cautious around the one-who-was-not-Hope, his fringe shadowing his expression. When the healer left, they were left to their own devices. He was swinging his leg back and forth, glad to be rid of the heavy weight, while watching Snow just as warily as the man was watching him.   
  
It was Snow’s impatience that made itself known first.   
  
“Well,” the man said. “Who are you, then?”  
  
He didn’t know how to answer. Who was he? He was Hope Estheim, but he wasn’t at the same time. He was the boy who was left behind, the one scared of gaining attention, but also scared of being left behind. And he was the one who was tired. Tired of fighting for the future, tired of struggling for every inch against fate and destiny and divinity and things so much greater than a person could handle. He was the one who didn’t want to deal with it anymore, but also couldn’t stop himself from getting involved because if he didn’t work hard enough, if he didn’t keep going, then everyone was going to disappear from his grasp.   
  
He was the human weakness thrown away by a God.   
  
In the end, his gaze returned to the window and the lights outside as he thumped his heel against the bottom of the window seat in an attempt to gather his thoughts.   
  
“I’m not really anyone,” he murmured honestly. “I’m kind of who you think I am, but I’m not, too. I’m just a part of a whole. Cut off.” _Like Lumina._  
  
He didn’t want to explain it anymore. Was sick of even thinking about it. All he wanted to do was watch people watching the fireworks: he just wanted to see the faces of those around him lit up by wonder and delight. It was a strangely enchanting sight.   
  
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Snow protested, sounding angry. “If you are and aren’t who I think you are… then where’s Hope? People don’t just disappear like that.”  
  
And there it was again, that hurt and that vindictive, childish anger. Pale green eyes glared at the man. “ _You_ did. Everyone else did. Why can’t he?”  
  
The venom behind the tone prompted Snow to take a step back, to reconsider the direction the conversation was going. They were both getting irritated now, each just feeding the other’s ire. “If you’re not Hope, then how can you know that?”  
  
Of course he knew about it. It was one of the feelings of resentment and loneliness that created his existence, after all.   
  
“It doesn’t matter.” He bit out, because the more he thought about it, the more upset he felt. He didn’t like being upset, not when he could instead be immersed in someone else’s positive mood. “I’m not really him, and you’re never going to find Hope anyway.”  
  
He turned his attention back to the window, back to the fireworks, determined to ignore Snow.   
  
“No one’s ever going to find him again.”


	6. Day 6: Minor Characters (Bartholomew Estheim)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some days, Bartholomew Estheim couldn't stand to look at his son.

 

Some days, Bartholomew Estheim couldn’t stand to look at his son.  
  
It had once been a great source of amusement to him and his wife when Hope was little, that the boy looked so much like Nora. He had joked with her one night on the couch after Hope had gone to bed, the two of them sitting there with glasses of wine and an ignored movie in the background, that had he not known any better, he would have claimed Hope to just be Nora’s son and not his. The boy certainly took after her in just about every way, almost as if Nora had managed to clone herself but change the gender of the child.  
  
It was easier as Hope grew older and started developing that sense of _style_ kids in Cocoon liked to claim, with gelled hair and colorful clothes. That was less like Nora, who was always wore subtle colors and never bothered with appearances so much. And Bartholomew would look at his wife and smile, knowing that although he couldn’t spend as much time with his family as he wanted to, she was beautiful and patient and would teach their son how to be a good person in place of him.  
  
Being rarely home meant that the moments he did manage to spend with his family were precious, and Nora’s smiles all the brighter when he was gifted with them.  
  
He never thought he would lose her smile.  
  
And there was no time to breathe, no time to properly grieve. He didn’t think he would ever be able to properly grieve had he all the time in the world. From the moment he heard about the Purge, Bartholomew had done everything in his power to look for his family again — taken time from work, hired investigators, stayed home on the off-chance — _just in case_ — Nora and Hope would make their way home. Nora was cunning, after all. He never managed to win an argument against her; surely she would be able to convince the soldiers guarding Bodhum that neither she nor Hope were Pulse l’Cie. At the very least, he knew, she would get Hope home. And then Bartholomew would go after her, his beloved Nora. He’s chase and find her and rescue her because that’s what he would do, because she was his life and heart and the reason he worked so hard each day away from home. To give her and Hope a good life.  
  
He had worried and fretted and scoffed when the news said that the Purge trains made it to Pulse. He had packed his things, ready to move there himself — to follow his family to hell, when the private investigator he hired pulled him aside to tell him that the trains never made it past the Hanging Edge.  
  
That Nora and Hope were most likely dead.  
  
Bartholomew refused to believe it. He shouted and threw items and ordered the investigator out of his house, crashing things to the ground and raging like he never had before… not since before Hope had been born, not before he met Nora. And for an hour after the rattled investigator made a hasty exit, Bartholomew had cried in his large and empty house, realizing that he had been the one to make it large and empty. He had been the one who wanted to give his family bigger, better things — never realizing that they never really needed it. He wanted the best for Nora so that she could live her life in luxury and relaxation, and the best for Hope so that his son would never lack for anything. The best clothes, the best home, the best school…  
  
All of it. Wasted.  
  
Instead, he should have taken the time off like Nora had requested. Gone with them on this simple vacation to see fireworks. Before Hope started high school, she had told him with a laugh and a gentle hand on his arm to keep his attention, before his interests were diverted to girls and being cool and growing up. Before, before, before. She had been the perceptive one. He should have just followed her advice, and gone with things _before, before._ Instead, he had always seen the _after._ After high school, Hope would go to college. They would need to save the money for that —  
  
Wasted.  
  
He cleaned up the mess of broken glasses and pictures before the doorbell rang again and Bartholomew rushed to the door, his movements wild and desperate, praying that beyond everything, it was his family back again. That Nora and Hope would be standing at the door with tired smiles and say that they had managed to talk sense into the soldiers. It would be just like Nora, too —  
  
Except it wasn’t them. It had been his secretary, tired and worn and concerned for his well-being since he stopped answering his business line and she had left him messages every hour for the past day before regarding the extremely important meeting coming up with his investors.  
  
He had slammed the door in her face, unable to deal with the matter without wanting to scream at her face that meetings like that weren’t _important,_ that nothing in the world was important next to the matter of his family, and why hadn’t he _figured that out_ before all of this happened, so that he could have spent more time with them, instead of promises promises promises that he had broken. So that he could have gone with them to Bodhum to watch the fireworks, and perhaps have seen the happy shine in his wife’s beautiful pale green eyes as he held her under the bursting lights and promised her all over again that he would be there to take care of her for the rest of their lives. He put off their vacations for a _meeting,_ one of so many that he had to attend day after day. Meetings could be delayed and replaced. Nora couldn’t!  
  
So when the news of l’Cie in Palumpolum had come, Bartholomew had to bite down the hard sting of irony. Perhaps they had come for him, so that he could join his wife and son. The Sanctum would of course Purge Palumpolum as well, and then perhaps he would go where his wife and son had gone. It wasn’t until he caught the glimpse of silver-white hair on the emergency broadcast regarding the status of the l’Cie dangers in Cocoon that his heart had sped up.  
  
 _Nora!_  
  
But no. After hearing the rush of blood ringing through his ears, he realized that the figure on the screen, barely visible behind a pink-haired woman, was too small to be his wife. Was wearing brighter colors, even if the clothes looked dirtied and worn in a way he would never have allowed of his family. It was Hope, even if the defeated posture didn’t look like his son’s. Hope was always too headstrong, too willing to speak his mind and argue to be that figure huddling on the screen. He had always been a little too vain for worn clothing, and Nora had indulged him shamelessly, only too happy to dress her son up in new clothes all the time. Even when he had been slouched and sulking, Hope had been able to draw his father’s attention from across the house. Perhaps he was biased, but Hope always had the presence that he was sure would develop into a charisma Bartholomew himself never quite had when the child grew up.  
  
But Hope — Hope was alive! And as much as Bartholomew wanted to be out in the streets, searching for his son, for that elusive glimpse of silver hair and nearly blindingly orange and yellow clothes, he knew the best place to find his son would just be… at home.  
  
The wait was grueling, even as Bartholomew distracted himself by clearing the house of debris and all the smaller bits that he had broken in his fit of anger. He lingered over photos of his family, where Hope stood sullen in front of his parents, where Bartholomew had his back straight and faced the camera dutifully, while Nora was the only one who smiled.  
  
And soon enough, his doorbell went off once more.

  
—

  
Seeing Cocoon like that — gleaming in the harsh sunlight of Pulse, made Bartholomew’s heart race with fear. While the visage was beautiful, he was looking at the safe home provided to humanity for the last thousand years. Looking at it from a world filled with dangers.  
  
Everything was different now. He would have to build a new life for him and his son (and thank goodness, _thank goodness_ he didn’t lose Hope during all this as well, because he knew exactly what happened to l’Cie and despaired over the fact the past several days. If his son wasn’t captured and killed by the Sanctum, then there would be a good chance that he would run out of time and become Cie’th. Bartholomew barely dared during those dark days to believe that his son and the makeshift group of strangers accumulated along the journey would actually be able to complete their Focus. The impossible Focus.  
  
Looking at the planet now, looking at Cocoon… it was undeniable proof that they managed the impossible. And more than that, when Bartholomew thought of the best case scenario being his son frozen in time as crystal for the rest of eternity, he had already been preparing to sort through his grief on the matter. He hadn’t expected to see Hope running his direction minutes within his airship’s rough landing on the planet below. The truth of the matter was that Bartholomew rationalized never seeing his son again after the group of l’Cie left his destroyed home in Palumpolum.  
  
 _His destroyed home._  
  
During that time, he had been too caught up in the cacophony of bullets and soldiers, but it was only after when the Guardian Corps picked him up that Bartholomew allowed himself a moment to breathe and step through the broken glass of his home. Broken furniture and bullet-ridden walls were the only thing that greeted him then, and the man quickly took the bags he packed earlier before leaving with the soldiers, determined not to let the overwhelming sorrow in his chest debilitate him.  
  
Nora was gone. His Nora. The light of his life he had taken for granted to always be there. Her death made all the more painful by Hope’s confirmation, by the understanding that there might never be a body to bury. Those days he waited, guarded by soldiers, had him go back through his memories of her. Of when they first met, when he first gathered the courage to ask her out, when she agreed to spend the rest of her life with him, when she told him he would be a father…  
  
He wanted nothing more than to go back to those days once again, when he took the time in the mornings to watch her wake and smile at him, and when they would talk so far into the night that he would fall asleep on her mid-sentence. He wanted her back. He wanted her there with him, finding some kind of optimism in the situation he landed himself in.  
  
Staring at the crystal of Cocoon, Bartholomew allowed a hand to rest on Hope’s shoulder, offering comfort in the only way he could manage. If Nora were here, she would have drawn their son into a hug, would have murmured soothing words and promises into his hair even as her very presence comforted Bartholomew. But he wasn’t Nora, and he and Hope did not have the type of relationship close enough for such words or actions.  
  
It was standing there in the sunlight of Pulse, with the crystal glow of Cocoon reflected in their direction, that Bartholomew first looked at his son only to backpedal immediately. For a moment, just a moment, as he glimpsed Hope’s unreadable expression half covered by his bangs and so much older than his years, Bartholomew thought he was looking at Nora. Just for a split second. Just…  
  
And then Hope turned to give him a curious look, and Bartholomew shoved the thought to the very back of his mind, smiling for his son.  
  
The next few years would barely take the edge off his grief, would increase his discomfort each time he glanced at Hope, whose features grew sharper as he grew, as he got taller and slowly started to display the grace his mother had. Slowly, Hope shed the awkwardness that often plagued him despite still being stuck in the stage between child and adult. He stopped styling his hair, stopped wearing the childishly bright colors he had once been so fond of, and Bartholomew couldn’t, _just couldn’t,_ stop to tell his son that each added similarity to Nora was another knife in his heart.  
  
He threw himself into work instead, into the process of rebuilding society and civilization on both Cocoon and Pulse ( _Gran_ Pulse, he would have to remind himself each time) now. He wrote proposals, signed contracts, and edited bills to ensure the freedom and acknowledgement of l’Cie (or former ones, although there only existed a handful) as humans with human rights. When other educational facilities refused to admit his son, Bartholomew created his own facilities. He wheedled at the fledgling government for the excavation of Bresha, for the monument dedicated to all the lives lost during the Purge. Bartholomew Estheim became the forefront name in progress, in getting things done, in equal rights.  
  
Nora was gone, and now it was up to him to care for his son in an increasingly hostile world, and he never did anything by halves. If he had to move mountains to ensure Hope’s future, then that was what he would start with. All this and more he would do for his son, for Nora’s son, for the one thing he had left in the world to remind him of his wife. Hope was his last remaining treasure: the more time he spent with his son, he more the realized just what Nora had seen — why she took every effort in the world to spend more time with her little boy before he grew up and stopped needing her. Hope was bright, _brilliant,_ and had such a quick grasp on every topic out there that Bartholomew was left breathless whenever he scanned over his reports and projects.  
  
Hope had accomplished the impossible, winning against the fal’Cie, against fate, against everything history had taught the human race to believe. There was no doubt in Bartholomew’s mind that Hope would grow up to be even greater, to leave people dazzled in his wake, and it would be up to him as a parent to pave the way.  
  
…Even if there were times when Hope would slouch over a book, curled up at the edge of the sofa to catch the last rays of light in the day, and Bartholomew found himself having to look away (Nora used to sit like that all the time, used to pull Hope up next to her and read aloud to him while Bartholomew watched fondly from the doorway), because everything Hope did reminded him of Nora.  
  
Because he still had dreams, nightmares, where he lost the both of them during the Purge. Where he ended up with nothing, just an empty house sitting in an empty city. There were dreams where he would face Nora’s accusing eyes about not having been there, not being able to save her, not being able to save Hope.  
  
Rarest were his dreams where Nora survived, where it was Hope who died, and he would see his wife sitting in the moonlight at the windowsill she used to sit at all the time, wearing her grief openly. Bartholomew would fall to his knees on the ground next to her, grasping at her hand so she wouldn’t leave him, pressing his forehead against cooled skin in attempt to share the burden of her despair.  
  
In those dreams, he begged for her forgiveness, cried for the future torn from them, and pleaded with her to respond to him. Please, _please…_ Just a single word from her, even if it wasn’t forgiveness… he needed to know that they would be okay. Yes, their lives would never be the same again, but at least he hadn’t lost _her._ He couldn’t lose her now, now that she managed to survive the Purge, not when she wasn’t the only one to lose a child. They still had a future; they could have another child, they could adopt, they could never try again at being parents.  
  
It would be okay, he would whisper to her reverently, forcing himself to believe it. So long as she was there, as long as she was there, it would be okay…  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
Hope had frequent nightmares of the Purge, of the journey as l’Cie, of fal’Cie and cie’th and everything in-between. He dreamed of a time when things were simpler, happier; dreamed of a future denied where Fang and Vanille and Lightning were still with them, where he could reach them when he needed to talk to someone because there were so many times when he needed their advice.  
  
Those nights, he found himself waking and unable to go back to sleep, just staring at the ceiling of his bedroom emptying his thoughts until he couldn’t stand the sight above him anymore. Those nights, he would wander out to the windowsill his mother loved, would try to see what she had once been fascinated by. Those nights, he would count the stars in the sky and press cold fingers against the glass in attempts to trace shapes between the points of light.  
  
And sometimes, just sometimes, his breath would catch and he would freeze when he heard his father stumble out, still completely asleep and murmuring words that Hope was sure he was never supposed to hear. He would wait, try not to hear the words spoken to him, wait until his father completely exhausted himself before guiding Bartholomew back toward bed.  
  
A part of him would reel, would recoil, but Hope always said the same thing those nights.  
  
“Go back to sleep,” he would tell his distraught father as Bartholomew tossed and turned in agitation, echoing words his mother used to tell him after a nightmare. “Things will be different in the morning.”


	7. Day 7: Outfits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> According to video game mechanics, female armor tended to have an inverse graph where less mass signifies more defense.

 

It wasn’t like Lightning Farron particularly cared about the clothes provided to her on her journey to save as many souls as possible from Nova Chrysalia. The first outfit was provided by God, after all, and despite the complexity of the numerous metal bits and revealed skin, the armor was sturdy and comfortable without debilitating her dexterity. Other outfits proved functional as well, if more stylish, often with spells embedded in the fabric to help her cast and therefore facilitate her job.   
  
The red mage, Lightning thought originally when Hope presented it to her, seemed a bit much. While she approved of the fabrics, she hadn’t been very sure about the bright red attention grabbing aspect.   
  
“Didn’t you say something about _sneaking_ into Snow’s palace?” She drawled dryly, still baffled by the idea that Snow would have a _palace_ of all things, and that she would actually have a hard time getting in.   
  
“Trust me,” Hope told her then. “Sometimes drawing attention is the best way to sneak past a crowd.”  
  
That made absolutely no sense to her, but then again, Hope was the smart one who came up with some of the strangest strategies back when they were both l’Cie and managed to actually make it work. Seeing as he was the only one she could rely on now in this strange new world, she wasn’t going to question it.   
  
The clothes ended up being exactly as Hope said it would — most people, while they stared at first, would look away quickly enough and tended to avoid her if she were running past them. The bright red just meant she ran into less people now that they could see her coming, and most tended to let her do as she wanted because of the uniform.   
  
Convenient, she couldn’t help but think, even when attacked by a soldier and two flanitors. Even as the soldier shot at her, the cape of her outfit never broke, never tore. As she slashed the creatures down following a fire spell, she asked Hope over the comms, “Just what are these things made of?”  
  
“Um,” Hope sounded rather taken aback, “…flan?”  
  
“Not the monsters,” she corrected him, sheathing her sword. She pulled on a corner of the red cape with gloved fingertips, and then dropped it as she finished a thorough examination to find not even the slightest bit of goo accumulated. “The clothes you give me.”  
  
“Oh. It’s just something I’ve been working on.” The answer sounded elusive, even to her. “Self-repairing, self-cleaning, and it adjusts to the temperature exposed.”  
  
Actually, that made a lot of sense. She hadn’t felt the least bit over-heated despite all the running she’d been doing. “Hope. Am I wearing robots on my skin?”  
  
“They’re nanodroids.” Hope sounded affronted by the term ‘ _robots’._ “Synthesized to co-exist within the polyester fibers to enhance strength and durability of the clothes. I’ve tried numerous formations to enhance your magic as well as defend against enemy attacks, but they don’t always like to work together and—”  
  
Lightning listened with half a mind as she continued fighting her way through Yuusnan, making sufficient noises whenever Hope paused to see if she was still listening, even as his recounts of different experimentation with fabrics faded into etymologies and why proper terminology was important because robot actually meant slave and that shouldn’t be a name given to things that were trying to help them, after all.  
  
As useful as all that information was, Lightning was eventually forced to switch into a long formal dress anyway in order to play ‘the savior’ in the show that would get her to Snow (once they added a few explosives, that was).   
  
(Lightning felt she probably needed to have a talk with Hope about whatever hidden pyromaniac tendencies he might have. As _if_ she could believe he had miscalculated the fireworks.)  
  
—   
  
All in all, Lightning felt that whatever Hope was providing her with in terms of outfits (did he actually make those himself? Some were actually rather stylish) was far superior to some of the… stranger fashion senses out on Nova Chrysalia at the moment. (Because the large and rounded thick-framed hot pink glasses some residents wore as she walked by them made her recoil just the slightest.) Lightning had gotten rather attached to finding different outfits, even down on Nova Chrysalia, especially as the clothes would occasionally contain spells she had yet to pick up.  
  
There might have been some teasing from Snow about the evening gown, but that was his own fault for putting on a show where the ‘savior’ wore an extremely impractical dress on stage. Just how was she (the character, Lightning figured) supposed to fight in something like that? She might just go back to Yuusnan if she had to time and have a few words with the director of that play.   
  
Maybe after she finished helping Sazh find the soul fragments for Dajh.   
  
“It’s almost six am,” Hope’s voice said through the comms. “Are you ready to come back to the Ark now?”  
  
Lightning frowned and looked around her, her sword still out even as the monster before her took its last breath and faded away, taking the chaos around her with it. A few gleaming pieces of purple light later, and Lightning gave a quick nod, crouching down. She knew that Hope could see her movements. “Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Hope Estheim.”  
  
“Light…” Hope’s tone was exasperated; embarrassed. She found that it was harder and harder to get an emotive response from him, and congratulated herself each time she succeeded. “Not this again.”  
  
Even as his dismay rang through her ears, Lightning could see the rest of the world fading away, could feel her limbs lift up in the sudden weightlessness as she passed through the gears of a God’s pathway toward the shining white Ark. For a moment she tensed, wondered if she was going to be taken away again to her own mind where she would be forced to confront riddles she had yet to figure out.   
  
But that didn’t happen, and she found herself re-materialized within the Ark, ready to offer up the Eradia she collected for the day to Yggdrasil.   
  
“Welcome back.” Hope greeted her, this time not standing from his seat before the collection of computer screens. He looked rather immersed in the information he was gathering, so Lightning let him be.  
  
She needed in greeting, and then headed toward the other side of the platform after depositing the Eradia, where a white shining box awaited her. While she wasn’t ready to admit it in any way or form, Lightning found herself looking forward to the small bit of rest she got on the Ark, and for the next outfit and weapon that Hope provided. He had done a good job so far, crafting excellent weapons and clothing, and she sometimes wondered if he was bored up here all by himself to create such things on a daily basis.   
  
But then again, time passed differently on the Ark. For all she knew, her twenty-four hour limit each day could feel like more than double, triple, that for him. She certainly rested there for more than the split second that pass down on Nova Chrysalia.   
  
_Amazon Warrior,_ she read at the top of the box with a quirk of her lips, eyes skimming over the details and abilities that would come with the outfit. The name of the outfit was rather flattering, she thought, and the abilities were no slouch, either. Raising strength and constitution as well as providing the spell to help her guard against enemy attacks…  
  
She opened the box and then pulled out some rather impressive boots, making a brief and quiet noise of approval before finding the spaulder and vambrance, the under armor and…   
  
She frowned. Wait. Where was the rest?  
  


  
  
Hope was working on compiling a detailed map of various areas in Nova Chrysalia with the highest statistics of containing the soul fragments Lightning was so determined to find when he felt a heavy hand on his head, stilling his movements as he squeaked out a breath.   
  
“ _Hope Estheim,_ ” Lightning’s voice was low and dangerous even as Hope froze in place with his hands still lingering above his keyboard, and he darted wide eyes in her direction to see her thunderous expression. “We need to have a talk about what constitutes as an _entire outfit_ and what’s appropriate to wear in public, young man.”


	8. (Divergence: Scintilla)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fang and Hope build a fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt request for toneofstark on tumblr! Here on out, I think I might get a bit slower with these prompts because uhhhh too much writing in too short a time and I feel like I'm pulling water from stone.

  
  
“You having trouble there, kid?”  
  
Hope jumped as his concentration was broken, jerking back nearly a foot before he looked up to see Fang leaning over his shoulder and grinning, all teeth and sharp amusement. He shook his head quickly, and then hunched back over his work in embarrassment.  
  
“N-no.” He said, and then winced at his own stutter. “I can do it.”  
  
“If you’re sure, then.” Fang told him, and clapped him hard on the shoulder (hard enough he could feel his bones rattle, like when Snow was being enthusiastic about affection) before her shadow disappeared from over him. “Just don’t take too long, yeah?”  
  
Hope could feel his face heat up, and his grip tightened on the sticks he had found earlier. It was just a stupid fire. He could do it. In fact, he had wheedled his own way into taking care of the campsite while the others hunted down dinner. They would probably be back soon, and he wanted to have the fire ready for them if nothing else. And it should be easy! He knew the theory — flammable objects plus friction equals spark, right? Technically, he could have just cast a _Fire_ spell, but he had seen the others do this without spells and, well…  
  
He took a long breath and stared at the small pile of firewood he had gotten as he exhaled, making a mental checklist. Dry wood, got it. Kindle, got it. Slightly sharpened stick against another stick? Got that as well. In fact, he had been attempting to get the kindle to burn with the stick for a good five minutes now. Did it really take that long? It hadn’t taken anyone else that long the previous dinners. Maybe he really should just use a _Fire_ spell…  
  
“That’s a mighty glare you’ve got there,” Came the amused voice from above him again. “I see you’ve been learning from Lightning, then.”  
  
Hope startled. Again. _Damn it._  
  
A brief laugh and Fang dropped to a crouch next to him, reminding Hope that she had volunteered to stay behind and watch the campsite with him while Vanille (whom Hope had thought would stay behind as well) bounded off with Sazh, her voice high and cheerful as she regaled the man on all the stories she heard about the creature they were to hunt down.  
  
(Her movements also reminded him of a predator’s grace, but that brought along a wave of jealousy comparing that and his own stilted, awkward movements. Both Fang and Lightning, Hope thought, moved like water against steel. Their movements were flowing and sharp, fluid and dangerous.)  
  
“You know,” She told him, this time smiling almost as gentle as she did with Vanille. “It’s alright to ask for help. Not everyone gets it the first time around.”  
  
As if his face couldn’t get any redder. He looked away. So it was that obvious, huh? He just wanted to be able to do something for the group, or at least be good at _something._ Building a fire had felt like a safe place to start, because it was a tiny goal: failing in that aspect felt enormous, though.  
  
But what she said wasn’t true. Everyone else figured out how to build a fire: even Sazh and Snow, who had never done it before in their lives thanks to the convenience of Cocoon’s resources. They had gotten it their first try, while Hope watched intently each time to pick apart what looked like such a simple process.  
  
“ _Snow_ got it on the first try.” Hope grouched, hunching over tighter. He didn’t want to show Fang his failure, but it was obvious the woman could tell so there was no use in hiding it.  
  
Fang snorted, and then leaned down to his level. “Yeah, between you and me? Hero must have been practicing his magic, seeing as he barely got a spark.”  
  
Hope couldn’t help it, between the frustration and the need to think about something other than his own lack of success, he felt his lips twitch up. He shouldn’t be making fun of Snow anymore, but…  
  
“Ahh, there you go.” And Fang reached out to nudge his nose with her thumb, grinning at him. “There’s that winning smile that charmed even the taciturn soldier. Can’t have you looking too much like her, soon we wouldn’t be able to tell you two apart!”  
  
Hope leaned back and rubbed his nose, unknowingly bringing the stick in his hand up as well, poking himself in the face. “Ouch.”  
  
Fang threw back her head and laughed while Hope used his free hand to rub at his cheek in a futile attempt to push away his embarrassment. How come he was always making a fool out of himself in front of her…?  
  
“Here,” Fang said, still snickering as she reached for the stick. “I’ll show you how to do this — not start a fire for you! Just showing you.”  
  
Hope wanted to protest that he watched the process each and every time, that he was imitating it to the best of his abilities so far and nothing seemed to work, but the words felt stuck in his throat. Fang hadn’t volunteered to help when the others were learning — instead, it had been Vanille who cheerfully and patiently explained the process for the others. Fang, as he remembered, had her arms crossed in the back of the group, had looked like she would rather be anywhere but there, had been impatient and snappy with the slightest hint of failure.  
  
He stayed silent as she explained the process to him, showed him with motions slow and controlled, spoke about pressure and speed and how moving hands up and down created a spark faster, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate on it like he had the previous nights.  
  
“…Why are you being nice to me?” He finally asked, voice small and immediately regretting the question the moment he spoke it. His eyes widened at his own words. “I mean — I don’t mean it’s a bad thing! It’s just — I, well, I just don’t understand.”  
  
Fang couldn’t stand when anyone slowed the team down. She was fierce and made sure all of them could survive in the Yaschas Massif, and that meant being more stern than Lightning had been even back in the Vile Peaks. She was the first to point out when someone, usually Hope, did something that could have easily gotten him and everyone else killed.  
  
He admired her as much as he admired Lightning, but tended to stay a little further away from Fang because at least with Lightning he had some sort of leeway, had a chance at wheedling his way out of trouble because he _just didn’t know_ about something. Fang only saw inexperience and lack of knowledge as an excuse.  
  
Right?  
  
Fang handed the sticks back to him, and Hope accepted hesitantly, watching her warily despite how her small smile never faltered. “Now, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Pulse is a harsh place, you know? Even hardened warriors take a wrong step and end up in the maw of some monster somewhere or buried in the sands. I gotta make sure the lot of you softies survive. You’re family now. Means I gotta knock a few survival lessons into your heads before you get yourselves killed.”  
  
She placed a hand on his head, fingers sliding through his hair down to his scalp. “Now that don’t mean you need to be good at everything. That’s why we move in a group. But on that off-chance that something happens to the rest of us, and I’m not saying I’m going to let it happen because I’m not, you gotta be able to survive by yourself. The same with all of us, thanks to our little time limit. I want you to be able to continue.”  
  
Hope swallowed down the lump in his throat at the words, feeling his eyes grow moist even as he looked away. He hated thinking about that possibility, about being left alone. It was bad enough in the dark hours of the night when he couldn’t seem to will the thought, the fear, away.  
  
They all had a time limit, except for Fang. What must it be like for her to watch all of them ticking down? Hope had no doubt that she would trade Vanille’s brand without a moment’s hesitation, that she would die to have Vanille live for just a little while longer. He hadn’t imagined that she would wonder about the rest of them as well.  
  
“You’re our kid now, and I’m going to look after you, even if I need to be the mean one in the group. But Hope,” and this time the pressure on his head, kneading at his scalp, brought his attention back to her. “You’re doing great, yeah? Don’t forget that.”  
  
Hope nodded, and tried to swallow the lump in his throat once, twice. His voice was still hoarse when he murmured, “Thanks.”  
  
He didn’t see her smile falter, but felt her withdraw her hand and nod at him. “Now, let’s have another go at that fire, shall we?”  
  
This time, under Fang’s patient advice and readjustments, Hope could feel the warmth of a spark develop under his fingertips.


	9. Day 10: Emotions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You light a candle for lost souls to find their way home.

“They last longer,” Vanille explained while they were searching through Oerba for anything that could be useful. Nights on Gran Pulse were pitch black, a shade that Hope had never encountered before and much darker than anything he could have ever imagined, darker than closing his eyes and trying to shut out all light. Cocoon was always bright, even at nighttime (compared to Gran Pulse, anyway), while the planet below was... To be honest, it was somewhat terrifying, especially the first night they had to spend down in the Mah’habara, where even the brightness of stars couldn’t seep through the layers of earth. As none of the Cocoon born l’Cie could sleep without a slight illumination, there had always been a few embers left for the one standing guard. Fires would burn too bright and attract too much attention, yet no one outside of Fang and Vanille could feel comfortable enough to drift to sleep in the complete dark.   
  
The orange-haired girl was holding up a milky wax candle, smiling as Hope followed along behind her, arms full of broken wood from old furniture and whatever supplies he could scavenge: oils and gears, trinkets and ropes. If it had lasted the hundreds of years, it should be sturdy enough for whatever they might need it for... right?   
  
“And it’s not too bright; not like the fires you always build.” There was a teasing tone in her voice, and Hope could feel his cheeks heat up despite the roll of his eyes. “If we could find a few more of these, we’d be able to save our _fire_ spells for when we really need it. Casting magic all night isn’t good for you, you know! It’s bound to drain your energy even if you don’t think it does.”  
  
“It’s not like we cast all the time,” Hope mumbled in protest, still a bit embarrassed by her teasing. “It needs something to burn.”  
  
They reached the old and rusted house which had been their base for the past day quick enough, having been tasked with searching the houses closest to their hideout while the others went a little further out. Hope pretended that he didn’t understand the motivations behind that decision, not liking to linger on the thought of being treated like a child.   
  
“Well, at least you know not to burn wet wood now!” Vanille agreed enthusiastically. “Was that really your first time building a fire?”  
  
They pushed through the doorway, Vanille bouncing in and announcing their presence cheerfully while Hope lingered behind a bit to close the door quietly around the bundle in his arms. No one else had gotten back yet, but he hadn’t expected any of them to when they would have had further to go.   
  
“Kids aren’t supposed to play around with fire,” Hope explained as they set their loot down at a corner of the room, spreading it out on the rickety desk. “And where would I have gotten a chance?”  
  
He leaned in to examine the candles that Vanille had found scattered through the premises, though, curious. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen candles before— his mom liked them and would burn one from time to time, although he never really understood why. Maybe it was just something she liked because it looked nice, or maybe it was just a girl thing.   
  
“The candles could be useful,” he conceded, “do you think we should go looking for more?”  
  
“I’m sure there will be more around if we need it,” Vanille responded mysteriously. “Everyone had some, you know. Just in case of a power outage.”  
  
It was a concept Hope might have had a hard time comprehending a while ago, since power never went out on Cocoon. He wouldn’t have been able to imagine a time without power... except with the journey down to Pulse, the group had to survive without any sort of power for the past several nights already, and his imagination had enough to work with that he could see the scenario where that might occur.   
  
“I thought they were just for decoration.” He admitted somewhat reluctantly.   
  
Vanille’s smile brightened at his admission, and Hope couldn’t help but smile back. “Well, everything around here has a purpose, you know! Even if it just looks pretty, it was also really useful in certain situations.”  
  
Maybe that was the thing on Cocoon— because they had been protected from just about... everything, they had forgotten the use of items.   
  
“And even things people don’t really think useful,” Vanille admitted in a quieter voice, looking just a bit abashed. “For traditions and such. Sometimes people lit candles to light the way home for those who were lost, or for the loved ones that they miss.”  
  
She placed the candles down on the table to the side of all the metal pieces that Hope had gathered, and sat next to him on the bench, elbows on the table with her hands supporting her chin in a rather girlish manner. Hope held his breath as her arm brushed against his, quelling the urge to squirm in his seat as her heat permeated through his sleeves and side.   
  
“Sometimes you could see a sea of candles,” she said, voice hushed as if sharing some great secret, her smile turning soft and wistful. “During the nights dedicated to the fallen warriors. It always looked like a miracle... little lights flickering on pathways and stairs and in windows, so their spirits could follow the glow home.”  
  
Hope wondered how that would look like. Maybe something like the Parade of Lights in Nautilus? But those lights looked different from this. There was no flickering, no wavering and swaying under the slightest breath. He would have scoffed before at the thought of lights bringing in spirits, but paying attention to the candle before him, Hope could believe it.   
  
Vanille must have noticed his silence, because she squirmed to the side and brought over two untouched candles, smiling brightly at him before handing him a long and tapered milky stick.   
  
“It’s a good thing we’re up in the buildings.” She said brightly as he curled his fingers over the candle. “Cie’th don’t really care about light, anyway, so we can actually burn as many of these as we want. No animals to attract, see?”  
  
Hope nodded dumbly, wondering where she was going with that. He had assumed that earlier, with how enthusiastic Vanille had gotten and the amount of candles she had picked up. She handed one of the candles to him, and he accepted with a murmured thanks, although he didn’t quite know why.   
  
“Sometimes,” Vanille told him, bringing up one of the smaller sticks that they had salvaged, and began carving something into the base of the candle she was holding. “We would use these to remember the dead. Not to guide their souls back, but to show them that we’re thinking of them still. Those times, we carve names in the candles. Just so they would know it’s for them.”  
  
She lifted the wax candle and blew carefully at the bits she carved off, then turned and smiled at him. “I’m sure the others won’t mind if we light a few more.”  
  
Vanille leaned to brush shoulder to shoulder with him, and offered the stick. Hope hesitated, an unnamed emotion thick in his throat as he studied the thin branch with the smoothed bark and crooked points, one in particular filed to a point. He knew what she was saying, understood that she was trying to offer him comfort in her own way. But he wasn’t sure he wanted it, not when he had been doing so well to not think upon the events.   
  
Focus on the what was in front of him. Keep his concentration on the battles, on the journey, on keeping alive and keeping up with everyone else. That was what got him through the days down on Pulse.   
  
(He didn’t want to think about his mom, or his dad, or what happened in Palumpolum or anything else. Just one foot in front of the other.)  
  
Seeing his hesitation, Vanille reached over to press the stick (more a twig than anything else) into his palm, and then curled his fingers over it, dropping her own unlit candle in her lap. Hope marveled at the warmth of her hands, at the strength in her slender fingers against his own.   
  
“It’s okay if you don’t want to light it.” She told him, tone gentle. “It’s okay to not think about it at all.”  
  
“I know.” He said, and looked up from the stick at her again, this time smiling. Even if he had a hard time thinking back, Hope wasn’t going to upset Vanille if he could help it. He didn’t like seeing her upset, and if doing this would make her happy, then… well, it would make it easier for him.   
  
He took a quick breath and forced his mind to blank even as he carved out the letters of his mom’s name in shaky blocks, fingers feeling stiff and unwieldy. Vanille hummed happily in response and turned her attention away (probably to give him a little bit or privacy) as she dipped her candle wick into the tiny flame of the already lit candle. She stayed seated next to him the entire time, however, holding her own candle steadily while she lent him the warmth (the courage) to continue.   
  
He looked outside the window after he was done, eyes catching the russet colors of sunset and the lingering warmth of the day. The night will be cold, he knows, and the others would be back soon with parts and with food to combat the coolness of the evening air. They would all huddle up together in one room, the room Vanille had chosen for them, speaking and laughing and warding off the chill, the past, the future. Hope would fall asleep against someone’s shoulder or side, close to the fire and close to the others to draw in their warmth.   
  
But for right now, before the others got back, Hope would light a candle with his mom’s name carved on the bottom, and let the glow both illuminate the way home for the others and travel the distance to wherever she was now, telling her just how much he missed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, okay, here's the thing. I'm still working on day 9 (like the loser I am) but have finished EVERYTHING ELSE for days already and I felt bad just leaving it here so I'll keep going and hopefully come back to put up day 9 later. Can I do that? Well, I am.


	10. Day 11: fal'Cie (PART 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edge of Tomorrow inspired (no, the movie's not out yet. This is inspired by the mere trailer). Noel Kreiss signs up for the war against the Gods.

  
Noel Kreiss is eighteen when he first stepped foot on the grounds of a Cocoon enlistment camp on Gran Pulse. That’s the day he first meets Serah Farron, petite and fierce in a way he had never before encountered. She is a nurse in the encampment, supposed to be, but her blue eyes are far heavier and older than anything he’s ever seen before, and he grew up with Yeul, who cried herself to sleep because she could see the future. (Yeul stopped telling them what was to come long ago, years ago, after everything they did to change the future would only bring her more tears and pain as they made things worse somehow.)  
  
"Noel," she greeted him, and he felt like he was hit with a wave of electricity, giving him goosebumps and seizing his muscles before he could reach automatically for his swords. How did she know his name? "My name is Serah. And you’re here to sign up in the fight against the Gods."  
  
He was, but she couldn't possibly have known that. She wasn’t even supposed to welcome him. Noel had prepared himself to be laughed out of the camp, prepared to grit his teeth and dig his heels into the ground. Cocoon soldiers, he knew, underestimated Pulsians. The war between them the last decade had been nothing more than a joke to them — they practically won within two weeks, their distance weapons superior to swords and spears. While seasoned warriors could take on the machines, dozens of them at a time even, it didn’t stop Cocoon from manufacturing more machines that would storm their lands and destroy their homes while they fought. Machines that often slaughtered children who tried to hide while the warriors were out attempting to fight the war. But those on Pulse were nothing if not stubborn, nothing if not persistent and angry. They were used to the planet being stronger than them, with monsters roaming around being stronger than them, with even their plantlife coming to life and attacking them. Despite Cocoon’s brush off of Pulse, those who were used to surviving on a daily basis would prevail.  
  
They continued the fight. Swore not to stop until every last breath was taken from every warrior, even if those vipers on Cocoon stopped bothering with them. The Pulse survivors banded together, different tribes and different governments, lying in wait until one day… one day the skies opened up from the amount of blood spilled into dirt, and the Gods woke from their long slumber.  
  
If nothing else, the Gods proved that those on Cocoon had been nothing but kind.  
  
Cocoon had been quick and merciless, yes, but their brutality had lasted merely two weeks before they stopped. The Gods residing in the skies created terrible creatures to battle them, creatures of twisted metal and crystals, of a power beyond what either world could imagine. The fal’Cies tore apart both Cocoon and Gran Pulse within a day, slaughtering millions. Cocoon, Noel learned on that day, at least had the common courtesy to only fight the tribes who fought back. The war between two human worlds had been a war of soldiers, even if dozens of children had been caught in the crossfire.  
  
After the first day, the two worlds declared peace between them in fear of a greater enemy they had in common.  
  
Yeul had died that night, not due to the attack but sometime in her sleep, finally succumbing to the burden of her visions. The day the Gods appeared, Noel lost everything: his grandmother, the rest of his tribe, Yeul, and even Caius when the man disappeared after Yeul’s death the next day.  
  
Cocoon would be the lesser of two evils, Noel understood. Yeul had whispered to him, the last words before she went to sleep that night, the only chance of surviving is if everyone works together. If they didn’t, then all of mankind would perish within a week and their bones would be nothing but dust in the canyons.  
  
"You’ll be assigned to the Skyfall division." Serah told him as she gestured for him to sign his name on the glowing screen in her hands. She seemed entirely unconcerned with the strange looks the two of them were gathering as she guided him around the encampment, other pale Cocoon soldiers narrowing their eyes or whispering to each other in a manner that made Noel twitch his jaw and stand up straighter in defiance. "There’s less than twenty six hours before the squadron departs, and you’re going to have to know how to operate the armor and machinery by then."  
  
"I know how to fight." Noel told her then, harsher than he intended in response to the hostile feelings he was sensing from other soldiers.  
  
Serah tucked a wisp of pink hair behind her ear and stared up at him, again with the strangely old eyes. “I know you can. But the technology here is delicate, and blowing up your comrades by accidents is not an option.”  
  
She stopped walking, and then turned to face him directly after accepting a small, pen-sized object from a passing nurse who then hurried away, passing the same object to several more people nearby. “I’m sorry. This must be very new to you. Here, hold out your hand.”  
  
He didn’t really want to. The way she spoke, the way she moved, was something that made Noel think he was in way over his head. He had originally intended to sign up and fight, to bear the humiliations until he proved he was a better soldier than them, a better warrior. He was there to fight the fal’cie, fight the Gods, not listen to a petite woman who had eyes like Yeul’s and definitely knew more than she let on. He was here to avenge his loved ones, not make friends with the enemy. (Because Cocoon was a nest of vipers, Noel was taught growing up, just waiting for the right opportunity to strike.)  
  
As if already knowing he was be unwilling, Serah reached out for his wrist and pressed the pen-like object against his skin before he could pull away, her reflexes sharp and fast. He hissed and yanked his hand back when he felt a pinch.  
  
"Inoculation." She explained to him, and showed him her own palm where there was still a small red circle in the middle. "Everyone has to get it. The fal’Cie spread a sort of… disease around. Without it, you’d fall before you can even draw your weapon."  
  
"How do you even know that?" Noel demanded, rotating his wrist to glare at the small red circle over his veins. There couldn’t have been enough time for those on Cocoon to create an inoculation, could there? How did they even know about the disease? He hadn’t known, and he had been there during one of the attacks. His heart was pounding in his chest, exploding again and again, his imagination throwing him into scenario after scenario where the shot was poison, where he was being brainwashed into some weird Cocoon doctrine, where....  
  
This time, she placed her hand over his raised one, and he felt a shock unlike the previous pinch. This one was caused by the warmth of her skin, creating goosebumps even as he raised his eyes to meet her old, old ones.  
  
"You’ll understand in a little while, I promise. Sleep first, and then Dr. Estheim will explain everything to you."  
  
To his growing horror, Noel felt his vision grow dark, felt his legs giving out from underneath him. He wanted to shout at the woman, wanted to demand to know what she did, but couldn’t draw the energy.  
  
"I’m sorry. This might be the last peaceful rest you’ll get in a long while."  
  
That was the last thing he heard before darkness claimed him.

  
  
—

  
  
When he woke again he was resting against a pile of crates and people were shouting around him, clearly in a panic. Noel jerked awake with a start, immediately alert to the chaos around him as mechanized beasts and machines stomped past along with the armored foot soldiers and a siren blared over his head.   
  
“All soldiers to your stations.” A female voice announced calmly over the large speakers above him. “Outer perimeter has been breached. Four minutes till hostiles in range. Repeat, four minutes till hostiles in range.”  
  
Noel pushed himself to his feet, feeling just the slightest bit unsteady even as he snagged a running soldier who nearly tripped over him. “What’s going on?”  
  
“Don’t you have ears?” The soldier (a girl, he realized by the voice, since the armor gave no indication of gender) snapped at him. “The fal’Cie are heading this direction! Get suited while you can, man.” She broke free of his hold on her and continued on, but not before giving him a curious and befuddled glare.   
  
Noel stumbled back, confused with the chaos and more than a little resentful for the lack of details — he was here to fight with them, ready to put aside a decade long war and the prejudices he had grown up with (well, ready to  _start_ putting it aside) — couldn’t they give him at least a bit more of an explanation?   
  
A hand snagged his and Noel drew his sword immediately, ready to fight, before seeing a young girl his age dressed not in the typical armor of Cocoon but in the furs and beads of Gran Pulse. She smiled widely despite the cacophony around them and gestured for him to come with her, before letting go of him and turning and dashing off, her steps spry and light around the army running around them.   
  
“Wait a minute!” Noel called out as he followed her, scarcely managing to duck around a slim floating machine emitting green waves where it went. It was a relief to know he wasn’t the only Pulsian here, and he grabbed on to that familiarity as he followed her. “Hey, wait!”  
  
He could barely keep sight of her around all the people and machines, and it was lucky that she wore such bright pink colors, her bright hair and bared skin a beacon against the sea of dark metals and black armor. Noel stumbled around various people as he followed in her path, growing more and more frustrated by how easy it was for the girl to move around the place and how people moved around her like oil and water.   
  
“Over here!” She called out when he almost lost her again, and waved to him from a bunker to his left. Noel hurried after her, glad to be away from the amount of things running around as he stepped into the bunker. The girl was already moving, stepping further in as his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden lack of light.   
  
“Serah told me about you.” The girl said, her voice light and lilting as if people weren’t panicking right outside. “I’m Vanille. Oerba Dia Vanille. You’re Noel, right?” But then she shook her head before he had the chance to respond with his questions. “Never mind — you can answer later. You need to get dressed first!”  
  
He wanted to protest but wasn’t given the time before she shoved him into a small cubicle and shut the door behind him.   
  
“I’ll be right back after you get dressed!” She told him cheerfully through the thin metal door, knocking on it once as if to emphasize her words. “Gotta take care of the fal’Cie coming at us first!”  
  
“Wait, no, what’s going on?” Noel demanded from inside the cubicle, ignoring the sleek dark armor waiting for him encased within the wall. He pounded on the cubicle door once, twice, and then finally decided he had _enough_ of this confusion and braced himself against the narrow walls before he kicked hard and broke down the flimsy metal door.   
  
The girl — _Vanille_ — was nowhere in sight, but the sirens from outside finally stopped for one blessed moment. Noel was ready to breathe out a sigh of relief for his eardrums before the shouting started — the screaming and sounds of heavy gunfire freezing him up for a split second before he drew his swords and raced out the bunker.   
  
The outside was an organized mess. Row after row of monsters and soldiers stood at the ready, with a heavy wall of machines at the very front firing everything they had at….  
  
Noel gaped. Despite being attacked by them the day previous, he had yet to see a fal’Cie this close, not when he had been tasked by his grandmother with Yeul’s protection when the invasion started. He got her as far away from all signs of fighting as he could, but still hadn’t been able to save her.   
  
This fal’Cie, he could see, was large. Very large. Bigger than any of the machines he had seen in this encampment, shrieking as it flew through the air. It looked like a metallic flying serpent, sleek and long with large segmented metals in shapes of skulls and beads for its tail.   
  
At that very moment as Noel stood under the shadow of a single bead of the fal’Cie, he understood how it felt to be facing one of the soldiers of God.  
  
“And here we go!” Came a familiar cheerful voice, startling him out of his reverie. He looked over to see Vanille with her arms raised, holding on to a strange contraption (a hunting assistant, he recognized faintly from textbooks, from Oerba) before she launched long barbed wires at the fal’Cie, dozens of meters into the air to hook on the metal skin and pull it down. “Go, Fang!”  
  
With a loud battle cry, another woman next to Vanille (another Pulsian!) used her spear to launch herself off the ground and jumped an impossible distance onto the fal’Cie, bringing the end of her spear down into it’s metal back and causing it to thrash and scream.   
  
“Now!” Came a young male voice from behind him, and several of the large machines fired all at once right through the metal holding the three smallest beads for the fal’Cie’s tail on, causing it to break off even as the warrior of God screamed in the sky. “One more!”  
  
Again, another choreographed string of explosions, and one more bead came off, crashing down to the ground with the string of metal it was carrying.  
  
By then, the fal’Cie had broken free of both the spear and the wires, and the Pulsian woman (Fang?) jumped off to land gracefully on one of the fallen beads, the smallest already easily much larger than her. She waved at someone else, entirely unimpressed by the fal’Cie writhing above her in the sky. “Your turn, hero!”  
  
Noel continued to watch, stunned, as a man lept from the watchtower at the edge of the encampment, followed by a woman who looked a great deal like Serah, and the two of them managed to wrestle the fal’Cie still once more for the machines to fire off another round and sever more of its tail. More coordinated strikes like that, and minutes later the large creature crashed down to the earth with only one bead left in its tail, transforming into looked like a dragon with human arms and claws for fingers, numerous immovable metal wings upon its back, it’s form still larger than the largest building in the encampment.   
  
It dug its claws into the ground and shrieked, a terrible sound that caused many of the soldiers to cry out as they tried to cover their ears. Noel followed as well, gritting his teeth as the sound reverberated through his bones, feeling like it was trying to reach to the very depths of his bone marrow. He looked up immediately, though, as the noise was interrupted by gunshots and the smell of ozone.   
  
_Magic._ Very, very strong magic, by his senses.   
  
Where at the beginning of the battle it had been Vanille standing in the middle of the open space to draw in the fal’Cie, now there were six people. He watched them fight together in awe, their movements fluid and perfectly timed against each other. Where one would move to strike, another would immediately follow up to leave the fal’Cie no time at all to recuperate. The creature, the monster, was blocked in constantly by a wall of ice, by strikes of lightning and left disoriented by mighty gales of wind feeding blazing flames. Slowly, bit by bit, Noel watched as the great beast, the warrior of God, tired and died.   
  
The skin of his hands itched where it gripped his sword, tense with a need to be part of that battle — to move as that group did, all synergy and power. This was what he wanted, he thought with excitement. This is what he imagined when Yeul had told him about Gran Pulse and Cocoon working together, taking down Gods.   
  
Noel would never be able to forgive Cocoon for the war, but he could look past it so long as they had a common enemy. Cocoon had never touched the Farseer tribe, but he had heard horror stories nonetheless. Not a week ago, he never would have believed that residents from both worlds would be able to come together in a fight like this. Now that he was seeing it, was hearing the dying wails of the fal’Cie, Noel wanted nothing more, _nothing more,_ than to be a part of a group like that. It didn’t matter if more than half the group looked like Cocoon residents. It was the trust inherent in each and every action, in every spell and strike of a weapon, knowing that someone else had their back.   
  
Noel had fought many times before. Beyond counting and beyond what he could remember, even, but he had never fought with a group like that before. Training with Caius had been so different — he wasn’t allowed to trust anyone else in a fight.   
  
It was the pink-haired woman who looked so much like Serah who laid the final blow, twisting in midair with her sword to pierce through the face of the fal’Cie, digging her blade far into the gears of its skull.   
  
The body of the fal’Cie fell heavily to the ground now that the creature was dead, and many of the soldiers in the front ranks started running. Noel had to duck several paces away as the giant clawed hand landed nearly on top of him, instead smashing into a crate not three feet away from where he was standing.   
  
He barely heard the cry of, “Noel, _move_!” before he registered the small round objects spilling from the smashed container next to him, several of them dented and damaged and crushed beyond repair. Some look like their been split in half, others merely… disassembled.   
  
Then there is the sound of an explosion, and intense pain, and nothing.


	11. Day 12: Time (PART 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edge of Tomorrow inspired AU, continued.

Noel jerked awake, his head pillowed against a pile of crates.  
  
It’s absolute chaos around him: people running to and fro while the metal speakers above inform him of the situation. He gets up shakily, lingering phantom pains all over his body for a few seconds like the remnants of a dream. He has to clench his fists several times to shake off the pain of shrapnel, and then is almost bowled over by a stranger who runs just a little bit too close.  
  
He feels disoriented, nauseous. _Was that all a dream?_  
  
Except seconds later there’s a hand wrapped around his wrist and he comes face to face with a Pulsian girl, smiling at him and gesturing him to follow her.  
  
 _Vanille,_ he recognizes. He follows, this time more conscientious about where he steps, weaving around the crowd like she does, feeling as if his feet know where to go even when she disappears from his sight several times. He sees her at the bunker again, and this time doesn’t wait for her to call out before he slides in with her, now aware enough that he wanted answers.  
  
“Vanille.” He greeted her, feeling a bit uneasy with how casually he was addressing her. But she and Serah were the only two to have introduced themselves to him so far, and they already knew who he was… “What just happened?”  
  
Vanille paused, and then beamed brightly at him, the expression out of place with the sirens blaring outside. “Oh good!” She exclaimed, hands clapped together in front of her. “So Serah was right about you. What do you remember last, Noel?”  
  
 _What?_  
  
He remembered pain. An explosion. A very large one, he wanted to say. Confusion. He remembered the darkened metallic hand of the fal’Cie, it’s claws curled toward the sky, resting above a crate of broken spheres.  
  
“…An explosion.” He finally admitted.  
  
Vanille looked sympathetic, green eyes gentle even as she gestured for him to enter the same cubicle she pushed him into the first time. “Well, you’ll know what to avoid, then. I’ll be right back after you get dressed — gotta take care of the fal’Cie coming at us first!”  
  
With that, she bounded off, and Noel was left with the sharp feeling of deja vu. Just how often did fal’Cies attack this base, anyway? Just how long had he been out? Why had he woken up outside like that? How come he wasn’t injured at all?  
  
Noel took a moment this time to sit down in the cubicle, staring at his palm even as his flexed his fingers. Something just didn’t add up, didn’t feel right. The words spoken over the speaker were the exact same, and even Vanille’s phrase was too similar. He wasn’t in the slightest bit injured. Maybe that was a dream, then? The past few minutes, that was. Maybe he had dreamed the past few minutes up and... no, that didn't make sense. Then how would he have known Vanille, and where she would lead him?  
  
He glanced up at the outfit embedded within the wall, the black armor sleek and new. He still didn’t know how to put that on — the material looked strange, and there were no openings that he could make out. Too constraining.  
  
Vanille was from Gran Pulse. From what he remembered, he saw another women dressed in the tribal wear of his world as well. That meant he wasn’t the only one who thought to join with the enemy... former enemy now. That was good. It meant that he wasn’t alone in this situation, strange as it was. And from the fighting he had seen earlier, both Vanille and the other… Fang, were quite amazing warriors. Not to mention, it looked like they knew what they were doing. Maybe he could ask them to teach him what they knew afterward. He could…  
  
He clenched his hands into fists, feeling the residual thickness in his chest as thoughts of his tribe came up. They had grown small in number, yes, but he hadn’t expected — hadn’t —  
  
The grief was tangible, recalling Yeul’s tearful face. He remembered his grandmother calling out for him to run, to protect the Seeress, to do as she said no matter what. He remembered running; just… picking Yeul up and not looking back, feeling her small fingers trembling against the back of his neck even as she pressed her face against his shoulder and cried. He remembered screaming for Caius along the way, feeling angry and betrayed when he couldn’t find the Guardian anywhere. He remembered finding a small cave in the mountains, finally and reluctantly setting Yeul down only to have his breath catch when he looked back to where his village had been.  
  
Nothing but flames. The entire landscape had been red and hot, black smoke swirling into open skies. How could he have possibly missed that heat while running? Nothing could have survived that. Not man, not animal, not so much as a blade of grass.  
  
He shook his head, slapping his cheeks with his palms once to throw off the memories. This was no time for things like that. Grieving could come later. First he had to make sure —  
  
The firing of heavy weapons broke him out of his reverie completely, and Noel stood stiffly from the cubicle, once again foregoing the uniform to make his way out of the bunker… carefully, this time. From what he remembered, the people here were organized enough that they didn’t immediately need help with fighting a fal’Cie… and that was something Noel wanted to learn. To be organized like that, to fight with others…  
  
He raced outside once again, stopping in his tracks as he saw the familiar line of machines, the soldiers, the tamed beasts and artillery. There were even the familiar metallic beads on the ground, scattered from where they dropped from the sky. Looking up, Noel wondered for a moment if all fal’Cie were supposed to look the same, because this one sure looked like —  
  
The people fighting it was familiar as well, their moves synchronized and predictable to Noel’s eyes. No, not predictable. They were the _exact same moves._ He had been entranced last time he saw it, trying to memorize everything they did to the point where he nearly forgot his own surroundings and the danger he might be in just from being too close to the fight.  
  
This was — this couldn’t be the same fight, could it? Even if they were fighting a tried and true method to take down the enemy, there would at least be some sort of inconsistency. A difference in jump height, a shot that went slightly astray, an extra punch or kick or…  
  
He tore his eyes away from the fal’Cie in the sky and the six people performing what looked like a miracle, and shifted his attention to the crate he was standing next to. Undamaged. Still, if this meant that those six would be able to take out the fal’Cie, then he had another thing to do because they certainly didn’t need his help in that battle.  
  
He didn’t stop to think on it further, instead steadying his feet against the dirt and bracing his shoulder against the pile of crates, pushing at first tentatively to estimate the amount of pressure needed, and then heavily as it refused to budge. He looked up at the fight before and above him, trying to gauge just how much time he had before the last strike would land, and shoved again at the immoveable wall.  
  
Inch by inch, the crates started to give way, and Noel gritted his teeth even as he kept his attention on the fight — on the familiar moves as he tried to recall just how far he would have to move this weight before it would be in the clear. Slowly, slowly…  
  
As the pink-haired woman landed the finishing move, Noel dove out of the way of the collapsing fal’Cie, rolling on the ground to ensure his distance before he drew his sword and impaled it into the ground in front of him as a flimsy shield just in case —  
  
He looked up, and breathed out an inaudible breath of relief to see that the monstrous clawed hand missed the dangerous crate by mere inches. That was too close.  
  
“Good job,” came the familiar voice, this time behind him. The same voice who tried to warn him away last time. Noel looked up to see Serah smiling down at him, having abandoned her casual outfit for the same black armor that the rest of the soldiers wore. Her pink hair was still telling, though, soft and wavy as it slid over her shoulder. She offered a hand, while he took gratefully to stand up, and said, “I guess this is still early for you were pushing it like that. See this?”  
  
Serah stepped around the giant monstrous claw, and gestured for Noel to come and see what she was pointing to: a small button near the bottom of the crates, inconspicuous and nearly hidden from the later of dirt kicked up when Noel forcibly moved it. “That’s how we get these things around. Press once and it will lift off the ground. Press again and it sets itself down.”  
  
She demonstrated quickly, and Noel watched with a vague sense of irritation (what had all that effort been for, then?) as the heavy crates lifted and hovered in mid-air before Serah dropped them down again.  
  
Serah looked pensive. “If you didn’t know about that yet, then I guess I still have to explain a lot to you.”

  
  
—

  
  
“Who do you know here?” Serah asked him as she led them past the clean-up crew of soldiers, waving them on as some stopped to salute to her. “Because we mostly assume you know everything already unless you ask.”  
  
“But I don’t know anyone here,” Noel responded in confusion. He barely knew her name, after all, and Vanille’s. “I just got here today.” He wove his way past several soldiers who might have parted for Serah, but didn’t do so for him.  
  
Serah stopped for a moment before reaching another bunker, this one much sturdier than the one he had been led to by Vanille. It didn’t look temporary, for one, but rather like the middle of the entire base. The heart to protect at all costs. “It can’t be your first… you knew about the explosives. Your second?”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
Serah held a hand to her chin in contemplation, but then shook her head after a moment. “It’ll be easier to explain with the others. You must have met Vanille? She was supposed to help you into your suit, but…”  
  
Noel drew back defensively under the girl’s disapproving stare, clearly meant for the lack of black armor he had on. “I met her. She—” He wilted slightly in remembrance. “She said she’d get back to me after the battle.” Maybe he should have stayed in the first bunker, after all.  
  
Serah giggled behind a hand. “Don’t worry about it. If she doesn’t find you there, she’ll come straight here. She knows how this thing works.”  
  
 _This thing?_   Noel wanted to ask, but Serah was already busy entering a complicated code into a holographic screen right next to the heavy metal gate of the bunker. The door slid open with an accommodating sound, and she didn’t waste any time entering. Noel had to scramble to follow her fast and extremely precise footsteps before the metal doors slid closed behind him.  
  
“If it’s still early for you, there are a few tests for you to take. Next time, you can just tell us the results and you won’t have to take the tests again.” Serah continued as Noel examined the pristine white halls they were walking through, the ceiling perfectly curved and interjected with small round white lights. There was an elevator at the end of the hall, and Noel felt unnerved at just how empty and sterile the place was. With the amount of people outside in the encampment, he expected it to be more… crowded.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Serah told him softly as they waited for the elevator and Noel tried to digest just what was going on, taking in the cold and austere surroundings. “This has to be really confusing for you. The same thing happened to me, but… it’s been so long for me that I don’t even remember how I must have felt the first time.”  
  
“You keep saying that.” Noel said, doing his best not to show his unease. “First time, second time… what are you talking about?”  
  
She leaned slightly against the white wall in thought, crossing one ankle over the other as she hugged her arms around herself. It took a moment before she hummed thoughtfully. “Have you been feeling like… the same things keep happening over and over?”  
  
“The fight.” Noel observed immediately. The speakers, the sirens, the same words being said… but it felt almost like he dreamed and then woke up knowing what was going to happen.  
  
Serah nodded. “It all started… ten years ago. At least, ten years for everyone else. Hope could explain it better, but…” she shrugged. “He might not have the time. We’re all deploying tomorrow, and he’s got a lot on his hands.”  
  
The pink-haired woman took a deep, steadying breath even as Noel waited. “Anyone else would tell you about just how classified all of this is, but we don't really have the time and it doesn't matter in the end. Ten years ago, we found the first remnants of a… a Pulse fal’Cie on Cocoon. That was our first encounter with them, and that’s why everyone receives inoculations now, because we found out what they could do then."  
  
Noel rubbed at his wrist, looking down at the still slightly swollen red circle.  
  
“Back then, we didn’t know about what they were, or what they wanted. A group of people got too close to it and were… infected.” Serah gave him a weak smile. “Ever since then, we’ve been developing methods to fight against this _infection_ , so that it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. It took us nearly ten years, but… we finally figured it out.”  
  
“What happened to those people?” Noel asked, wondering just how bad this disease was.  
  
She shook her head. “A lot. Too much. But that’s not really my story to tell.”  
  
The elevator door opened then, and they both stepped in, Noel tensing at the glaring lights within. It didn’t feel right, didn’t feel natural. Nothing was this bright. Serah didn’t seem the least bit perturbed as she pressed several buttons once again on the holographic panel, and the door slid closed after them, the elevator coming to life as they descended.  
  
“What’s happening to you now, if I’m right about this,” Serah told him, “is what happened to me. It started — yesterday, for you. When the Gods first awoke and came to wipe us out.”  
  
Her eyes unfocused, and her features slackened to a sad frown. “The first time, they killed everyone within hours. Crashed Cocoon straight into Gran Pulse and wiped out all life on both worlds.”  
  
...But that wasn't what happened. Noel swallowed, wondering if he really wanted to ask, “First time?”  
  
Serah nodded. “And then I woke up. The very same morning the Gods came, hours before we got the first sign. I thought it was a dream… I think. Then it happened again. And I woke up again. Again and again. I didn’t know what was happening. I tried to change something every time after I woke up… _did_ manage to change something. Each time, I told someone else, made sure they took different actions… but it barely helped.”  
  
She turned bright blue eyes in his direction, and he thought for a moment that he could see an unnatural glow from them. “It took me over four hundred tries before I managed to save all the people important to me, and then I stopped counting. I’ve lived the past day for… years, at least, before I managed to find a solution to minimize the casualties. Before we managed to get a fighting chance. I knew what everyone would say to me before they said it, I knew all their reactions to different things that would happen to them. I knew who would believe me and who would need a demonstration. I knew every path to take, every path that failed before we finally found a way to survive the battle you must have seen yesterday. But for some reason, even if we survive to here… I always woke up again, same as before. I just couldn’t understand it. Didn’t know why.  
  
“Not until we saved you the first time. Then, for some reason, time _continued,_ and it kept going on, all the way until you were deployed with unit Skyfall and everyone died again.” Serah closed her eyes, bringing a hand to her forehead. “I survived, but still woke up again to do it all over. It took me a really long time… too long, really, to figure it out.”  
  
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.  
  
“There you are!” Vanille’s cheerful voice interjected, and Noel saw her wave at the two of them before skipping over from where she had been standing with the other Pulsian woman in the room before. “I looked for you two, you know? What took you so long?”  
  
“Sorry, Vanille.” Serah said before Noel could question anything. She smiled as the other girl took her hands. “We have some explaining to do. Noel doesn’t know what’s going on yet.”  
  
Vanille’s mouth opened to a questioning ‘o’, turning her attention to him. “Really? But you knew who I was before I said anything!”  
  
“It’s still early for him.” Serah explained.  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
Noel shifted his attention to the other pink-haired woman he had seen earlier, fighting with the rest of the group. The one who delivered that finally blow, he thought faintly with wide eyes. It was what finally made him study just who were in this room down at the bottom of the bunker. This… everyone who had been in that fight was here.  
  
“Noel,” Serah said, leaning to get his attention even as she smiled. “Let me introduce you to everyone. You already know Vanille, of course.” Vanille gave a smile and waved. “This is my sister — Lightning. Over there is Snow, my fiance. The one sitting next to him on the couch is Sazh, and the one standing next to them is Fang.”  
  
Snow gave a two fingered salute from his brow, grinning widely at him, while Sazh nodded congenially. Fang gave no indication she was listening at all.  
  
“And…” Serah stopped, eyes scanning the room before she huffed. “Hope, stand up! He can’t see you over all your computer monitors, you know?”  
  
There was an exasperated sound in response, and Noel saw a young boy with silver-white hair peek over the line of technology in the middle of the room. “…Hi.”  
  
Serah sighed loudly, drawing Noel’s attention again. “Don’t mind him, he’s always too busy for everything. But we’re going to explain whatever we can to you this time, so you’re prepared next time.”  
  
Noel swallowed hard. Back to business, then. “Next time?”  
  
“Yup.” Vanille told him from his other side. “You’re just like Serah, don’t you know? We’re going to be relying on you to tell us what _not_ to do.”  
  
The mere thought made him queasy. Sure, he had grown up with Yeul and he understood the idea of seeing into the future, but… what Serah had told him, what she said with that forlorn expression on her face… he didn’t know how to react to that. To live one day over and over and over again, trying to find some way to get to the next day…  
  
Serah looked sad as she watched the emotions cross his face. “I’m sorry,” she told him, “But it’s up to you now. If you run out of resets, then I go back again as well. That must have been what happened every time I woke up again whenever I finally got to this point. So we're taking precautions this time. I… I don’t know what will happen when I run out.”  
  
He couldn’t fathom it. The idea of being able to live one day over and over… and now he would have to worry about running out of time, as well?  
  
 _Of course,_ was the realization. _If we have the same ability, then each time Serah goes back, it must mean I’ve failed… hundreds, thousands, of times already. Every single time._  
  
It was an intimidating thought. Beyond intimidating.  
  
Vanille gently led him to a seat while Noel reeled at the implications, patting him on the arm even as she used the other arm to sweep the files and small gadgets that had been occupying the seat onto the floor.  
  
“It’s okay to take some time to get used to it.” She told him. “The rest of us still don’t really get what’s happening. To us, Serah woke up yesterday and just knew what was going to happen. She said she got used to it, so you will, too.”  
  
“This isn’t happening to you guys?” Noel asked, bewildered. He sat heavily in the makeshift chair, eyes darting to the pile of items now scattered on the ground. It was a strange mess in this too sterile room.  
  
Vanille shook her head. “Nope. We’re just going along for the ride.”  
  
“But how…?” Noel shook his head. “You guys knew how to fight that fal’Cie. That was—” _Magic._ Power. Beyond anything he had ever seen before, even growing up with Caius around. Caius had been the epitome of power for Noel growing up; the man was fast and strong with the brute magic to topple the greatest of beasts on Gran Pulse. But even that power seemed rather pale in comparison to what he had seen in the fight minutes ago.  
  
Vanille darted her eyes to the others, and it was Serah’s sister — Lightning — who answered instead, lips a stern line. “Might as well. He won’t ask again if he already knows.” She nodded to him, arms folded under her chest. “We were the group who fought off the fal’Cie ten years ago. So we’ve fought and killed them before.”  
  
“You?” Noel asked incredulously, shaking his head. It might begin to explain the level of power, but... weren't the group who encountered that first fal'Cie infected in some way? “Not to be insulting, but… that was ten years ago, right?”  
  
Most of them barely looked old enough to be adults. The kid sitting behind the monitors, _Hope,_ most certainly _didn’t._  
  
“The… infection,” Serah said, her words careful. She had her fingers laced together in front of her, stepping to stand closer to a now quiet and serious Vanille. “Stopped our aging. Because of it, we won’t be able to live out the rest of our lives until we defeated the God who created the fal’Cie that… infected us.”  
  
Noel thought the set-up seemed rather useful. They wouldn’t age, would be more powerful (from what he had seen)…  
  
“We need your help.” Vanille told him, hands on Serah's shoulders. “You’re the only way we can win this war. Without all of us working together… I don’t think we’ll be able to last the week.”  
  
 _The only chance of surviving is if everyone works together._  
  
Yeul’s words echoed through his head, bringing up a surge of emotions he had to physically shake off.  
  
“Okay.” He told them, feeling both uncertain and so absolutely sure about what he was supposed to do that he couldn’t wrap his head around the feeling. It was a strange gnawing at the pit of his stomach, both reassuring and debilitating. He wanted to trust them. It could be exactly why he was here, exactly what Yeul wanted him to do. “What do you need me to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (And now going to actually see the movie tonight. Ta, lovelies! We'll see if the movie furthers inspiration, but this is pretty much done for this series of oneshots.)


	12. Day 13: Anything at all (CATS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anima has a twisted sense of humor and Orphan is not amused.

This was… not what Lightning expected when she resolved to go up against Anima.   
  
“What the hell?!” Snow yowled, stepping in circles for a moment to take in everyone and everything that just happened. Lake Bresha was completely frozen over into crystal, and everywhere they looked was a glittering blue and white. But more than that… “What just happened? What’s going on? Is this some sort of punishment? What the hell!”  
  
“Shut up!” Lightning snapped back at him, feeling a headache starting to form just from having to listen to his voice. It was all Snow’s fault anyway that they got mixed up in this (while she wouldn’t deny her own involvement, it would have been so much easier, so much _simpler,_ if he hadn’t followed and led the entire group… and where had they come from? Into this mess), and she was having no more of it.   
  
“Is this some twisted fal’Cie thing?” Snow demanded, ignoring her completely as he examined himself. “I thought they made l’Cies! No one said anything about this!”  
  
That was it. Lightning hissed, bracing herself before springing forward to tackle Snow head-on, sending the both of them rolling in circles as the others watched, far too cautious to try and interrupt their fight.   
  
Snow yowled again and tried to bat her off, but Lightning managed to get a good grip on him with her claws, her ears folded down even as her tail lashed back and forth in agitation.   
  
To the side, Sazh sighed audibly and lowered his head, covering his eyes with both paws in an attempt to drive out reality, while next to him a small orange tabby cat was draped half over a fluffy white kitten with her paws on his head, happily attempting to groom his ears while the kitten trembled in fear at the entire situation. 

  
— 

  
“Think of it this way,” Sazh attempted to cheer her up. “At least none of the soldiers tried to stop us.”  
  
Lightning just hissed low in displeasure, feeling her claws extending and retracting with her irritation every step she took. She would rather have fought those soldiers, would rather have taken an entire squadron on rather than just walk past them as they were doing now, merely two of the armored men hesitating for just a moment to give them a strange look. It turns out that no one could hear them talk at all, and one particularly tactile PSICOM almost lost his hand attempting to pet her.   
  
She and Sazh were leading the group now that they were all introduced and admitted to having the same dream — the same _Focus,_ of all things because the fal’Cie must be off their rockers if they thought that a group of cats of all things would be able to take down the entire planet — while Vanille and Hope stuck close together in the middle and Snow brought up the rear of the group, still fuming and nursing the long scratches she gave him earlier (and damned if she wasn’t proud of that still).   
  
There was another group of PSICOM coming their way, this time a small group of three, and Lightning felt her hackles raise more as one of them stopped and actually started cooing at the ‘family of cats’.   
  
That’s it, she thought darkly, and then once against braced herself low to the ground, feeling for her center of gravity as her spine slid into place for a jump.   
  
“Oh, no — c’mon, soldier girl, there’s no need to get violent—” Sazh broke off as he watched Lightning launch herself from the crystal all the way up to the soldier’s helmet, claws leaving long lacerations in the metal (far more than any ordinary cat could possibly do) as the soldier dropped his gun in shock, flailing and screaming trying to get the pink cat off his face. He took a moment to brace himself as well, feeling entirely too resigned to his situation (he was too damned old for this), and then followed suit, already seeing Snow come running up from behind him to do the same.   
  
The three PSICOM soldiers didn’t last long against the l’Cie cats, especially when Lightning started to figure out that she could do magical damage in this form as well. 

  
— 

  
They left Snow to stay with Serah’s crystal as the rest of the group continued on their sojourn while slowly discovering the abilities they had been gifted with. Speed and flexibility came with the form, but they also had strength like no other and magical abilities to take down to most fearsome of enemies.   
  
It must have been humiliating, Sazh though vaguely, to see giant monsters taken down by a small herd of cats. …Was it _‘herd’_ , though? Or group? He’d have to brush up on his vocabulary, since he had never imagined himself in a situation where the proper terminology might apply to him.   
  
At least the chocobo chick was staying a good distance out of reach in the sky, seeing just how quickly Lightning’s claws tended to come into play. He didn’t want the poor bird to be accidental dinner if the soldier gave into their more feline instincts now. Sazh thought he had a rather good control over his own instincts. Heck, over the entire situation in general given that they were left in control at all. He hadn’t lost his temper, for one, nor had he allowed the situation to overwhelm him enough that he would lash out.   
  
Until now, that is.   
  
“Move!” Lightning was demanding from his side, attempting to use her (diminished) weight to shove him aside even as Sazh finally bared his fangs at her to stop.   
  
“Are you a pilot or am I?” He demanded. “Let me fly this thing in peace!”  
  
It was hard enough attempting to reach controls he previously had no troubles reaching, but now Sazh actually had to stand full body on top of the consoles in order to extend paws where they were supposed to go, his claws extended to cling onto the metal as the ship tumbled about trying to shake off their pursuers.   
  
“Everyone strap in, it’s going to be a hell of a bumpy ride!” He called out, only to hear Hope howl at the back of the ship as he fell from the seat and tumbled to the wall, crushed a second later by Vanille. “And here we goooooooo!”  
  
The airship burst out from the cliffs past the the assembled weapons right into the bright blue sky.

  
— 

  
Lightning couldn’t help the bristling of her fur every time she heard Hope stumble behind her, attempting to scramble and hang onto the platforms she used as a springboard. It usually took him more than five attempts to make the jump, and she was sick of hearing his mewls of pain every time he tumbled back to the ground and had to jump again. At first she allowed him to follow her… well, mostly because she hadn’t _allowed_ it but he had done so anyway. So she may have been a little nicer than she normally would have for anyone else following her, but she could feel her patience come to an end.   
  
As he once again tripped over his own paws, Lightning stopped and shook her head. “This isn’t going to work.”   
  
He was too slow, too small, and despite his powerful magic, was still just a kitten, really. It was almost depressing watching him attempt to clean his white fur of the muck that he usually got tangled up in while traversing the Vile Peaks.   
  
She was sick of his mewls (mostly because it made her heart twist and she couldn’t allow that when she was determined to storm the Sanctum, determined to bring down Eden even if she had to do so by herself), and sick of the hesitance in his voice when he asked her his endless questions. She just wanted to be left alone. Picking up after a kitten… that wasn’t what she wanted. She had a hard enough time keeping herself alive right now, much less…!  
  
When the giant Eidolon appeared, Lightning found herself almost in a state of shock. She might have frozen there in disbelief if the giant creature hadn’t aimed his sword at the tiny curled white kitten mewing pitifully. Maybe it was a sort of instinct that made her throw herself into the fray, made her dive right under the giant blade and grab Hope’s neck by her teeth, lifting him up and jumping as far away as she could.   
  
After the battle was over, Hope approached her hesitantly, ears flat against his skull and tail drooping behind him, hesitance nearly emanating from him in waves.   
  
“I’ll do better!” He stumbled over his own words, staring up at her with pale green eyes wide and luminescent in the night light, “I’ll try harder, I’ll—!”  
  
“Hope.” She interrupted, and then stopped. Seeing him now, watching him sniffle, small and pale against the dark background of the Vile Peaks, she realized she had been purposefully avoiding looking at him straight on. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that there was someone here who relied on her, and if she left him behind now, there was no doubt in her head he wouldn’t make it. Wouldn’t last a day, much less a week. She hesitated now, watching him stare down on the ground, and then reached out to nudge his head with her nose. “We’ll toughen you up.”  
  
She turned away in a graceful circle, embarrassed by her own sentimentality, and hurried away. She could, however, hear the burst of happiness and excitement in Hope’s movements as the kitten stumbled after her, more energetic now than he had been before. 

  
— 

  
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”  
  
Snow hissed and struggled in the woman’s grasp, but she had him firmly by the back of the neck, far enough away from her that his claws couldn’t get anywhere near her.   
  
“Don’t tell me this happened to Vanille, too.” The woman exclaimed, frowning.   
  
Snow stopped. “Wait. You know Vanille?”  
  
“And you know how to talk.” The woman responded, still not letting him down. Snow took in her darkened skin, her strange outfit and the grace she moved with as she carried him away from the crystal statue of Serah that the Guardian Corps was gathering up. “So you’re going to have to explain to me everything that happened, because I think there’s something I’m missing here.”  
  
The soldiers around them were staring strangely at them, and Snow wondered whether he should tell her that no one else could understand what he was saying.   
  
Maybe later, he thought somewhat vindictively. If she was going to keep carting him around by the back of the neck, then he damned well wasn’t going to tell her she was talking to a common animal like a crazy person. 

  
— 

  
They practically snuck through Palumpolum undetected, only having the avoid the children on the streets with hands that tended to grab onto Hope’s tail if he wasn’t fast enough. A good thing, though, Hope thought, as it meant PSICOM had no idea the l’Cie they were hunting for were right under their noses. They wouldn’t purge this city as well. The people here would be safe.   
  
Lightning told him earlier that she was going to take him home, going to take him back to his dad so that he could figure himself out, but he wondered vaguely still if it was because she wanted to leave him there. He knew, of course he knew, that currently he wasn’t in any way suited for battle. A wrongly placed human foot could crush him.   
  
But still…  
  
He hurried along after her, half running after her graceful steps when they met up with Snow again… and a human named Fang.   
  
Apparently there was some trouble (just a little, the woman laughed) following her, so Lightning had left Hope in Snow’s care and teamed up with the strange woman in order to take out their ‘little bit of trouble’.  
  
It was, Hope thought a little resentfully as Snow carried him around by the back of the neck (since the large and sleek cat had grinned at him and said it was just faster this way), just a little too convenient, wasn’t it? Convenient that Lightning would leave right before Hope got back home, convenient that it was Snow who would take him the last leg of the way when it everything that happened was entirely Snow’s fault in the first place.   
  
Not to mention, Hope thought darkly, that if Snow called him a ‘cute little kitten’ _one more time,_ he was going to shove the older cat off a building. 

  
— 

  
Rygdea had to admit he didn’t wholly believe Fang when the woman told him point blank that the l’Cie the Sanctum were hunting for were really just a group of cats right now (herd?). But it was the solemn and infinitely careful way Bartholomew Estheim was holding onto a fluffy white kitten and shaking his head incredulously that finally had Rygdea believing (as opposed to the way the pink cat was actually using a survival knife to scratch out words on the metal of the Guardian Corps ship).   
  
“They say they’re going to take down the Palamecia.” Fang translated for the pink cat (who, according to them, was actually Sergeant Lightning Farron) after the broadcast about two l’Cie who had been captured and was going to be publically executed. “Those bastards aren’t going to do anything to Vanille if I have a say in it.”  
  
Rydgea just shook his head. He wasn’t going to go against the fierce woman if he could help it.   
  
“By the way,” Fang told him before he could leave, a gleam in her eyes. “You take the boys. I’ll take Sunshine here, and… clean them up a bit before we set off again, yeah?”  
  
Despite his very best efforts, Rygdea did not manage to get out of _that_ battle without being entirely soaked and thick claw marks all up his arms (that little white kitten was _terrifying_ ), and two wet and entirely unimpressed cats who now hissed at him whenever he stepped too close to them.  
  
After that, he wasn’t very surprised by the news a day later stating that the Palamecia had gone down, and the Primarch was now MIA.

  
— 

  
“Look,” Fang told them when the group first crash-landed on Gran Pulse. She had a hand to her temple in efforts to ease her budding headache just staring at the bunch. “Just… stay close to me, alright. Don’t go picking battles for the fun of it or anything. The beasties here will gobble you lot up in one bite and then continue on to find their mid-morning meal.”  
  
As impressed as she had been with their prowess during the siege of the Palamecia and against Barthandelus, Fang wasn’t looking forward to herding a group of cats across the monster infested plains of Gran Pulse.   
  
In response to her words, Lightning yawned and flicked one ear before she settled down for a quick nap in the sunlight, pulling Hope down with her until his head rested under hers. Vanille curled up against Sazh as Snow attempted to climb her sari for a higher resting place.  
  
Fang felt her headache intensify. This… really wasn’t going as planned.

  
— 

  
A week later, a lot of close calls, and a healthy appreciation of not bugging the plant life anymore, the group made their way to Oerba and battled Barthandelus once again. They made their way back to Cocoon and managed to nearly cause several heart attacks on the racetrack as workers tried to save the cats who appeared out of nowhere, but ultimately landed in Eden without anyone the wiser.   
  
Now the only problem was actually sneaking into Edenhall, which might have been easy for the group except Fang’s presence would definitely raise some questions.   
  
“I’ll go.” Vanille offered cheerfully, cleaning a claw before she stretched and pointed her tail in the air. “Me and Hope can distract them while you guys sneak in first!”  
  
“Wait, what?” Hope protested, ears twitching. “Why me?”  
  
“You got a plan, Vanille?” Fang asked, quieting Hope with light pets under his chin, making the kitten purr as he relaxed. She found it was the best method to calm the entire group when whenever one or more were being rowdy.   
  
“Yup!” Vanille said, and then nudged Hope with her head. “C’mon, we’ve got an important job to do! Time to show them your skills, Hope.”  
  
As the two youngest made their way out into the public from where they were all previously hidden down a dark alleyway, Fang watched in awe as the crowd managed to meander after the little orange tabby cat playfully chasing after a mewling white kitten. Even stern businessmen in suits stopped and smiled at the pair, until nearly everyone was distracted by the beautifully tabby cat who was so friendly and would brush against hands in search for pets and the cute little kitten who fell over with the slightest nudge, mewling in high pitched tones and licking fingers.  
  
“Those two,” Lightning said while shaking her head even as the group moved into one of the most protected buildings in all of Cocoon virtually undetected. “It’s a really good thing they’re on our side.”

  
—

  
  
“ _You?_ ” Orphan cried out as it rose into the air. “I am to be defeated by… just _you_?”  
  
“Not just me.” Fang pointed to the cats surrounding her, the lot of them hissing with their fur standing straight up. “Them as well. Don’t forget that.”  
  
She paused, and then shook her head, tightening her grip on her staff. “…And don’t ask me how, because I still don’t know just what I missed.”  
  
Honestly, after all creatures that the cats managed to fight off, Orphan was nothing but a goldfish in a jar to them.   
  
“It’s your own fault.” Fang told the creature as it died. “Turning them into cats. You could have at least had the dignity of dying by the combined powers of the human l’Cie you chose to do your bidding. But now you get to say that Cocoon was taken out by a herd of cats.” She paused, and then shrugged. “And me. Fang and a herd of cats. That’s one for the history books.”


	13. (Divergence: Fall Another Moment)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I know this was supposed to be that very last fabled day 9, but that one seems to be on the backburner of my mind and since I've been posting prompts I got during the ffxiiiweek anyway, I figured I'd actually finish this with the last prompt as well! I do have a portion of day 9 written, but that might just get shoved into another story or so. So this time, the prompt was adult Hope with any of the original party.

  
  
_This is a dream,_ Hope thought as he opened his eyes and looked up, because he could see the world above him like a distorted reflection that showed nothing but cloudy skies. The clouds were shifting, tremulous, and he could feel strands of his hair sifting against his face yet not with the wind. The colors surrounding him were vibrant and daring, yet muted in a sense that he couldn’t see the sunlight to signify day.   
  
He looked down and rested a gloved hand tentatively against what looked like cool stone railings, and frowned. The architecture was unfamiliar, the settings unnerving. The stone should be cold under his fingers, his brain whispered, but it wasn’t. The wind should be chilling his exposed skin, yet he couldn’t feel it.   
  
What was this place? The twisted cityscape that spanned before his eyes to eternity, land meeting sea in a flurry of waves against the shore. It was dark, but his vision was entirely clear….  
  
“Valhalla.” A familiar voice answered his unspoken question, and there was the clink of metal behind him, gentle like graceful footfalls on the ground. “From here, you can see all of time.”  
  
It was true, a part of Hope’s mind thought. Through the turbulent skies, he could catch glimpses of what had been, what was, and what would be. Not enough to make sense of anything, but given enough time…  
  
But his mind wasn’t on this wondrous discovery. Instead, he tightened his grip on the railing, reaching out with his other hand to do the same as if he’d be swallowed up into an abyss if he didn’t cling on. He knew that voice. All these years, all this time, with everyone disappearing, reappearing, telling him that Lightning had assigned them missions throughout time, that there were other places they needed to be because the fate of the world depended on it…  
  
He stopped thinking about his own part years ago. Three years, to be precise, when he forced himself to let go.  
  
He had spent a decade wallowing over the past (still a rather productive decade, but that didn’t change the progression of his thoughts during that time), trying to change things and wondering just about every day why everyone else got chosen for something else, something greater, while he was the only one left behind. Thirteen years ago, six people were chosen to bring down a planet. One person was chosen to gather them all together, and another was chosen to spur them on.   
  
Now, of that number, two were frozen in stasis to save a world, one was fighting to save a Goddess, and four were traveling through time through reasons outside of their control (two of those four working hard to resolve paradoxes and save timelines). Even new players had been introduced to this equation while only one stayed behind.   
  
He wasn’t a child anymore, though. He was grown with responsibilities and a heavy burden on his shoulders. Hope had shoved his way into the larger plan, paving his own path even if he had to do it alone. Years ago he almost resented it, had turmoiled over his actions and decisions, had wondered just why he hadn’t been chosen along with everyone else. Years ago, he hadn’t been able to stand it.   
  
Then came a part when he grew resigned to his fate, grew numb. He would visit Fang and Vanille near everyday at that point, sometimes ranting about his life to them and other times not speaking at all for hours. At that point, he was just tired of being angry, tired of feeling lonely. The quickest and easiest way out of that had been to not feel those emotions at all. A person could only handle intense emotions for so long before they became acclimated, after all. Maybe it was human nature to dull the pain so one could move on.  
  
Serah and Noel appeared at just the right point in Hope’s life, when he learned to shove back any negativity and concentrate on his work. At that point, he was still learning how to smile for his co-workers and take on the mantle of leadership people were quickly fostering on him. He was busy, and while he may not have been happy, he was content.   
  
He was content. It took ten years, but he had finally gotten there. And the next three years… the next three, Hope had looked to the future rather than the past, working his brain to exhaustion each day in an attempt to induce dreamless sleep.   
  
He decided, after Serah and Noel's appearances at the Paddra Ruins, that he was going to push and shove his way into making a difference because he was through with waiting for a sign. _No more._   
  
He spent three years looking forward, but now he could feel his resolve crumbling down around his feet.   
  
_Don’t look back._  
  
The choice was taken away when the footsteps came forward again, stopping next to him this time. One glance to the side and he forgot the years of anger, of inadequacy, of despondency.   
  
“Lightning,” The name felt like a invocation. He took in the armor, the feathers, the — _she hasn’t changed at all._ At least not outwardly. Her posture, however, was more rigid than he had seen, even back during the Purge. Tense, as a predator ready to leap at any moment. Still, the flood of relief the sight of her instilled in him was remarkable. “I’ve missed you.”  
  
She finally turned her head just slightly to glance in his direction, and he saw that his previous assumption was false: she had changed more than he could ever have predicted. It made Hope falter, and he turned his attention back to the landscape quickly, now plagued with new questions.   
  
“...Am I dead?” He asked, staring at the skies. Valhalla was the land of the dead, the land of the Goddess. He felt his breath hitch — he had known from the very beginning that the time capsule, nothing more than a gravity well, was a dangerous endeavor. Merely a prototype when there was no real way to test its efficiency. A thousand simulations had been run on the best computers the Academy had to offer, but none of that compared to the real thing.   
  
For a moment, he was disappointed. He had so much more to do, so much to oversee. He was sure he could do better than… just this.   
  
Even so, he wouldn’t mind this if it meant he could see her again. Stay with her. If possible, find his parents. Make peace with all the souls who died during the fall of Cocoon and that time before.   
  
“You’re not dead.” Lightning’s words sounded chastising, as if she couldn’t believe he thought that. “Just dreaming.”  
  
 _Oh._ Snow had said before that Lightning visited him a dream to tell him what needed to be done. Was this… was this it? Over ten years late, it felt like, but better late than never. Always.   
  
“Time passes differently in Valhalla.” Lightning continued to explain. “While it stands still here, the outside world continues to pass. Because of this, we may only have a few minutes before you wake.”  
  
“...I sleep for nearly four hundred years, and I only get a few minutes?” He hoped his incredulousness didn’t show too much. He must not have hidden it very well, because he could see the corner of her lips quirk up in amusement. “That’s a rather… drastic time difference.”  
  
“Hope.” Lightning finally turned to him, a gloved hand on the side of his face in a familiar gesture. Although it wasn’t to tilt his head up to pay attention to her this time. She frowned, looking like she suddenly had another thought over whatever she had wanted to tell him so seriously. “...You grew taller.”  
  
He blinked at the observation. Of… course he had? “It has been thirteen years.”  
  
She didn’t look appeased by the answer. In fact, it only furthered the downward slant of her lips. That evidence of displeasure from her, if anything, made Hope smile. “Do you disapprove?”  
  
“...No.” Her hesitance told more than that, even as her hand dropped from his face. “I don’t.”  
  
But she did somehow, just a little bit, and Hope prided himself on the fact that he could tell even as he wondered why she _wouldn’t_. Was him actually growing up a bad thing? Had she really expected him to stay the same?  
  
He tried not to let his smile falter. Maybe not. No one else really changed, after all.   
  
(He always thought they had left him behind as a teenager, but maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he was the one growing up and growing old and leaving everyone else behind.)  
  
“It’s just what happens,” he tried to excuse, trying to hold his smile even as he looked down and away. Back to the strange and ethereal landscape before him. He tried to let the swirl of colors and scenery take his mind away from this, but always found himself drawn back to the moment because as much as he wasn’t prepared for this conversation, he didn’t want to miss a single beat. If he only had a few minutes, then he was going to remember every single moment.   
  
Whether it was to analyze later on for data on the time streams and Valhalla or to use as a lifeline, it didn’t truly matter.   
  
“Yes,” Lightning agreed, although she sounded sad. “I suppose it is.”  
  
“Serah’s been looking for you.” He said, but then felt silly for the words. Of course Lightning would have already known, but at the same time he could understand Serah’s predicament — to search and search without any real answers, to go on with faith alone… He wondered if she managed to meet with Lightning yet. If she had, then what he was saying here was moot, but at the same time, those emotions before the end of the journey were still important. “She’s working hard on fixing the timeline and bringing you back.”  
  
“She has a very important job to do.” Lightning agreed, and then hesitated for the slightest moment. “So do you.”  
  
“Yes.” A while ago, he wouldn’t have believed it. That was before meeting up with Serah and Noel. He clenched his fingers reflexively in thought, still far too uncertain to reach out on his own. All these years, and he never learned how to plead for someone not to go; to stay with him and not leave him alone. Instead, Hope learned to solve the problems of others hoping that in some manner, he would be able to find a solution for his own. “Am I allowed to know? If I succeed?”  
  
“You haven’t, yet.” Lightning responded and then drew his attention back to her. It wasn't hard, not when a single movement from her would have him entirely focused. “Not so long as you stay here. But I can tell you this much — without you, we won’t win.”  
  
She held his gaze, and he wondered in that moment if her eyes had always been that blue. Just like Serah’s, except completely different. His memories had been painted over with stress and blood from the time they were l’Cie together, journeying to an impossible task. Not so impossible, perhaps, compared with the situations they were faced with now. If they could succeed then, they could succeed now.   
  
“Maybe one day,” she told him, “You’ll understand just how important you are.”  
  
The words pulled the breath straight from his lungs, and Hope found himself short on anything to say. What _could_ he say? _Not important at all if it hadn’t been for you._ He wouldn’t be there at all, not in Valhalla but also not in the position he was in, if it hadn’t been for her kindness back when he thought he couldn’t take another step forward. He wouldn’t have survived at all. Everything he was, he owed to her and the others, to Fang and Vanille and Sazh and Snow… to his parents, to Serah and Noel for paving the way…   
  
“Until that day,” Lightning continued, hands now withdrawing, “We’ll both keep fighting for a better future. In Valhalla and… in Academia as well.”  
  
He couldn’t stop himself from reach for her hands this time, even if his grip faded away the moment he made contact, fingers going slack with uncertainty. She was staring at him, expression unchanging, and Hope floundered. How was it that he had been looking forward to seeing her again for so long, and yet when he finally did… he didn’t know what to do, what to say.   
  
He knew that just seeing her again didn’t mean everything was over and that it was all okay, but… her words were reassuring, the water to a drought he hadn’t known he was suffering.   
  
“How come,” he swallowed his hesitance and apprehension, “you didn’t approve of me growing up.”  
  
Or taller. She must have known, though. Even if she hadn’t seen, hadn’t been watching him, she must have known how long it had been. How long she’s been gone for.   
  
“I said I didn’t disapprove.” She reiterated, words more brisk than before. “You…”  
  
She let out a breath, clearly frustrated. Whether it was with him, with the situation, or with herself, Hope wasn’t able to tell.   
  
“It’s a reminder.” She admitted after several awkward moments, even as she looked away this time. “I have to be here. I know this. But you… you’re not supposed to be taller than me. Not yet.”  
  
He wanted to protest that of course he was going to be taller, unless she honestly expected that he would stay short, but then stopped himself. He had been so good at reading her once upon a time. His height wasn’t unexpected, it was just a reminder of all the years she missed.   
  
For a moment, he tried to imagine what it must have been like to be suddenly plucked away from the world, to know there were people waiting for you back home but you wouldn’t be able to go back any time soon, maybe not ever. To see Serah’s life disrupted, to know she was the reason behind the delayed wedding plans Snow had once been so enthusiastic about.   
  
Seeing him now, older than she was…   
  
This time, Hope ignored his previous hesitation and grabbed onto her hands once again. This time, he didn’t let go. He had to get her full attention, the same way she so easily had his. “We’re going to finish this fight.” He told her. “So you won’t miss any more years.”  
  
For him, Lightning was gone from his life the past thirteen years. To the world, perhaps it was four hundred years now. And the fight would take longer than that still, but it had to end at some point. Hope wanted to make sure she would still have a place to go back to. For her, and for Fang and Vanille as well.   
  
For everyone, if he could.   
  
“And I promise,” he couldn’t help his smile, “that I won’t grow any taller before you get home.”  
  
Surprised, Lightning’s eyes widened a moment before she turned her head away, chuckling under her breath. They both knew it was a moot promise, but one that was so easily kept. It was nice to be able to keep one of his promises.   
  
“I’ll hold you to that.” She told him, the edge of her lips lingered in an upward curl. She nodded up toward him. “Close your eyes.”  
  
Hope complied, and felt her hands slip from his. A moment later warm fingers touched his jaw and pulled him down the slightest bit before a warm softness was pressed against his forehead and an exhale of breath against his skin.   
  
“Dream of the future,” she whispered to him. “And change the world when you wake up, Hope Estheim.”  
  
When he opened his eyes again, Valhalla was gone and the lights were that of Academia 400AF.


End file.
